Kirkbride, Thomas Story

Kirkbride, Thomas Story

(1809–83) physician; born near Trenton, Pa. Raised in a Quaker farming family, he was physician to the Friends' Asylum for the Insane near Philadelphia (1832), before joining Philadelphia's Pennsylvania Hospital to supervise treatment of the mentally ill (1833). Heading the Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane from 1840, his care and leadership mounted a "renaissance in psychiatry"; he insisted that insanity was illness and sufferers should be treated with respect and care.