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M E M I R 
 
 OF 
 
 CHARLES FOLLEN FOLSOM 
 
 BY 
 JAMES JACKSON PUTNAM 
 
 From the Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts 
 and Sciences, Vol. XLIV. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE 
 JOHN WILSON AND SON, 
 
 Sambevsttg Press. 
 1908 
 

DE. CHARLES FOLLEN FOLSOM. 
 
 When the news of the death of Dr. Charles Follen Folsom was tele- 
 graphed from New York to Boston, on August 20, 1907, a large circle 
 of persons — social acquaintances, patients, and professional colleagues 
 — felt that they had lost the support of a faithful adviser, the compan- 
 ionship of a dear friend. 
 
 It is a fortunate asset of the physician's life that he enters into inti- 
 mate personal relationships with many of the individuals who turn to 
 him for advice, and has an unusual chance to cultivate his powers of 
 sympathy. But there have been few physicians of this neighborhood 
 and generation in whom these fires of personal sympathy have burned 
 so warmly as they did in Dr. Folsom, or who have been able to in- 
 spire with reciprocal emotions so many of their patients and their 
 friends. The growth of these attachments was genuine and unforced, 
 for they were based on well-grounded affection and respect. 
 
 Dr. Folsom had settled in Boston, with a record of two years' faith- 
 ful service for the freedmen, but without influential connections and 
 with no instinct for advertisement of himself. He showed, however, 
 marked ability as a practitioner, marked willingness to labor for re- 
 sults worth having, a high standard of thoroughness and obligation, and 
 the highest possible standard of friendship, and it was not long before 
 these qualities made him a real figure among real men and women in 
 our community. Some extracts from a letter to his intimate friend, 
 Rev. William C. Gannett, written about 1881, will recall some of his 
 characteristic traits. He says: ". . . I do not agree with you as to 
 not making friends, even if it does hurt to tear up the roots. Go as 
 deep, say I, into as many human hearts as you can. Never lose a single 
 chance for knowing one person, even, well. In fact, it is the only thing 
 in the world that pays. You do other things because you must, or it is 
 your duty to do so, but that does not pay. You do not get back any- 
 thing, and the volcano inside of one only rumbles and growls to itself 
 instead of letting its smoke and brimstone out in the world, 1 whereas 
 in knowing people well you get more than you give." 
 
 1 The order of the clauses in this sentence have been slightly changed, for 
 greater clearness. 
 
4 DR. CHARLES FOLLEN FOLSOM. 
 
 "Yes, I am going to Munich to study with Pettenkofer andKVoit and 
 Wolfhiigel. I have the work to do and I want to do it as well and as 
 much of it as I can. 
 
 "But I do not care when I stop, whether next year or next week or 
 next century. So long as the machine runs, I want to keep some useful 
 spindles going. 
 
 "I suppose I shall say Good-bye, next month, to many I may not 
 see again, but I can't think of the 'gradual forgetting'; that seems 
 hardly possible, and life is too short and too full of disagreeable things 
 to ever forget one pleasant friend." 
 
 In another letter in which he discusses with deep feeling the sacrifice 
 he made in relinquishing the practical work of a physician for the 
 secretaryship of the Board of Health, he writes: "I have always been 
 strongly drawn to a life which will be one to bring me in close relations 
 with individuals needing help." And again, in the same letter, "If 
 people will only place their ideals high enough, they may easily or with 
 a fight make them real. . . . You know that I am conscientious from 
 sense of duty, if at all, and not, like you, by instinct, and that duty does 
 not come naturally to me, but only after toil and a fight." 
 
 The sentiments indicated by these citations point to Dr. Folsom's 
 general characteristics and his plan of life ; and the remarkable depth 
 of feeling on the occasion of his death, shared in by the many persons 
 whom he had befriended with his wise counsel and his generous purse, 
 or who had worked side by side with him and knew his efficiency, his 
 intelligence, his fidelity, and his power of accomplishment, is a suffi- 
 cient warrant that the plan was carried out. 
 
 The feeling expressed by the word "loyalty," which underlies the 
 best instincts of the moral life, was a fundamental feature of his 
 character. 
 
 Charles Folsom was born in Haverhill, Massachusetts, April 3, 1842, 
 the fifth of eight children. His father moved to Meadville, Pennsyl- 
 vania, when Charles was but seven years old, and it was there that his 
 boyhood was mainly spent. The life was simple and uneventful, but 
 his was a case where in the boy could be read in great measure the 
 character of the man. He gained new traits as he grew older, but lost 
 none that were of value. Sweetness and evenness of temper, affection- 
 ateness, a strong instinct of helpfulness, untiring industry, skill in 
 the use of brains and hands, — qualities such as these made him uni- 
 versally beloved. "The best boy in school and the foremost in scholar- 
 ship" was the judgment of his teachers and school-fellows. It is a 
 good test of a boy to be tried as the playmate of his younger sisters, 
 and Charles was held by his an older brother without peer. 
 
DR. CHARLES FOLLEN FOLSOM. 5 
 
 Both of his parents were natives of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. 
 The major portion of his ancestors on both sides were of the English 
 race, but the progenitors of the American branches came early to New 
 England, the Folsoms 2 settling in Exeter, New Hampshire, and the 
 Penhallows, whose name his mother bore, in Portsmouth. They were 
 all active, respected people, many of them prominent in public life. 
 
 Nathaniel Smith Folsom, Dr. Folsom's father, was graduated one 
 of the foremost in a somewhat notable class at Dartmouth College 
 in 182§. He studied for the ministry at the Andover Theological Sem- 
 inary, but was soon in the ranks of the Unitarians, and after some years 
 of pastoral work in New England was appointed (in 1849) to a profes- 
 sorship in the Theological School at Meadville. He was a fine clas- 
 sical scholar, high-minded and conscientious. From him, as well as 
 from his mother, Charles inherited the instinct for service to his fellow- 
 men that was so prominent in his nature. 
 
 Mrs. Folsom was a woman of rare sweetness and evenness of temper, 
 of fine and strong character, with the fidelity to duty and the steadiness 
 of purpose that had been dominant traits in her family for generations. 
 
 In 1861 Mr. Folsom resigned the professorship in Meadville, and in 
 1862 moved to Concord, Massachusetts, where he engaged in teach- 
 ing. Here the family remained for many years. I recall with pleasure 
 a short visit to them at that place, a cross-country walk with Dr. Fol- 
 som, then a medical student, and the impression made upon me by 
 his gentle, quiet manner, his simplicity and his love of nature. But 
 during most of the Concord period he was away from home, at Port 
 Royal, or studying his profession, and before this he was at Exeter 
 Academy and Harvard College, where he was graduated with his class 
 in 1862, the second year of the war. 
 
 Dr. Folsom would have enlisted in the army but for the solicitation 
 of his parents. An elder brother was then living in the South and had 
 been drafted into the Confederate ranks, and they could not bear the 
 thought of their two sons meeting upon opposite sides. This brother 
 was heard from once during the war, through a weather-beaten letter 
 which he managed to get smuggled through the lines, and it was after- 
 wards positively ascertained that he had fallen in 1862. Instead of 
 entering the army, Dr. Folsom offered his services to aid in carrying out 
 the newly organized enterprise in behalf of the freedmen at Port Royal, 
 and was sent to the island of St. Helena, where he remained for the 
 next two years. The Port Royal enterprise, so far as the volunteer 
 element in it was concerned, was the outcome of the sense of responsi- 
 
 2 The name of the first settler (1638) was written Foulsham. 
 
6 DR. CHARLES FOLLEN FOLSOM. 
 
 bility for the negroes on the part of Northern sympathizers with the 
 movement of abolition. Dr. Folsom's father was an ardent abolition- 
 ist and this move on his son's part had his warm encouragement; 
 there is some reason, indeed, to think that he suggested it. The story of 
 the movement is well told in a recent book entitled "Letters from 
 Port Royal," edited by Elizabeth Ware Pearson. Early in the war 3 
 the Sea Islands region of South Carolina, in the neighborhood of Port 
 Royal and Beaufort, became, all of a sudden, untenable for its 
 Southern occupants in consequence of the capture of two forts by 
 Commodore Dupont, and the great plantations there were at once 
 abandoned by their owners, who fled precipitately, leaving behind them 
 several hundred negroes, incapable of caring for themselves, and a vast 
 amount of cotton nearly ready for exportation. Not only this, but refu- 
 gee negroes soon came pouring in, so that the number finally reached 
 several thousand. Cotton agents were sent down by the Government to 
 look after the cotton, and Mr. Edward L. Pierce of Milton was placed 
 in charge of the negro problem and of the work of planting next year's 
 crop. Mr. Pierce sought at once the aid of private citizens, at first in 
 Boston, then. in New York and Philadelphia. A Freedmen's Aid So- 
 ciety was formed, and very quickly a band of the best people of the 
 North was under way, sufficiently well equipped in money, ability, and 
 ardent de\ otion to the cause, but destitute of training or experience, to 
 face the problems of "the housekeeper, the teacher, the superintend- 
 ent of labor, and the landowner," under conditions strange and new. 
 Especially prominent among them was Mr. Edward S. Philbrick of 
 Boston, but the group comprised many other persons of intelligence 
 and devotion, college graduates and women of the best sort. "For 
 the first time in our history educated Northern men had taken charge 
 of the Southern negro, had learned to know his nature, his status, 
 his history, first-hand, in the cabin and the field. And though subse- 
 quently other Southern territory was put into the hands of Northern 
 men and women to manage in much the same fashion, it was not in 
 the nature of things that these conditions should ever be exactly 
 reproduced. The question whether or not the freedman would work 
 without the incentive of the lash was settled once for all by the Port 
 Royal Experiment." 
 
 It was a difficult task that was set before this company of willing 
 but untried philanthropists, and it was well done. "Keenly as they felt 
 the past suffering and the present helplessness of the freedmen, they 
 had the supreme common-sense to see that these wrongs could not be 
 
 3 L. c. Preface. 
 
DR. CHARLES FOLLEN FOLSOM. i 
 
 righted by any method so simple as that of giving. They saw that 
 what was needed was, not special favor, but even-handed justice. Edu- 
 cation, indeed, they would give outright; otherwise they would make 
 the negro as rapidly as possible a part of the economic world, a laborer 
 among other laborers. All that has happened since has only gone to 
 prove how right they were." 
 
 It was natural that friendships formed among fellow-workers under 
 conditions such as these should be warm and lasting, and the small 
 group of men and women of which Charles Folsom formed a member 
 during the two years of their common labors in field and cabin on St. 
 Helena Island remained firmly bound through life. Dr. Folsom's 
 nearest friends were William C. Gannett and Miss Mary E. Rice, with 
 whom he afterwards freely corresponded, Edward W. Hooper, and 
 Charles P. Ware. Mr. Gannett in a recent letter writes as follows: 
 "While we were together in Freedmen's work on St. Helena Island, in 
 1862-1864, he lived for a long time in our homej — Miss Rice's and 
 mine ; I remember well, when the malaria caught me, how he used to 
 sit on my sick bed and tell stories until the room rang with our laughter, 
 and how he journeyed ten or twelve miles to Beaufort and back through 
 the sand just to get me a little ice for the fever." 
 
 The Port Royal experience was in some respects a disastrous one 
 for Dr. Folsom, since he there received an accidental gun-shot wound 
 in his arm which caused him a great deal of pain, and in addition con- 
 tracted malaria and a valvular disease of the heart, both of which 
 troubles are believed to have contributed more or less directly to his 
 death. He also began to suffer from severe neuralgic headaches at 
 about this time, due partly to the shot-gun accident, 4 partly, perhaps, 
 to the malaria, and on this account he was advised by his physician, on 
 his return to Boston, in 1865, to make a long voyage by sea. Following 
 this advice he went around the Horn to San Francisco as passenger on 
 a sailing vessel, and came back before the mast, much improved in 
 health though not quite relieved of his headaches, which continued to 
 trouble him during his medical studies and even later. He writes to 
 Miss Rice of his experiences on this voyage : " How amused you would 
 have been to see the calm and stately way in which I wash down decks 
 every morning, broom in one hand, water-bucket in the other, in my 
 bare feet, shirt sleeves rolled up to my elbows, pants rolled up to my 
 knees ; or could you but see my dignified roll as I cross the main deck, 
 slinging a tar bucket over one shoulder and the grease pot over the 
 
 * Some of the shot lodged in the scalp, and many, though perhaps not 
 all of them, were extracted some years later. 
 
5 DR. CHARLES FOLLEN FOLSOM. 
 
 other; or the sad amble as I pace the deck in the lonely midnight 
 watch, chanting the 'Gideonite's Lament' or 'Katie's*' gone to Rox- 
 bury.' I am exceedingly glad that I took the trip, and especially that I 
 returned a tarry sailor as I did. It gave me insight into a new phase of 
 life, and I am sure the benefit has been greater than if I had come back 
 a passenger." Mr. Gannett recalls the following incident, important 
 for our purpose: "A sailor fell from aloft, and broke himself all to 
 pieces so hopelessly that they left him in a huddle to die. Folsom 5 
 could not stand that, went to work with what knowledge he had, 
 patched him together as well as he could, nursed him, and brought him 
 through alive to New York." This was, as Mr. Gannett says, "his 
 first case," and a worthy one. 
 
 In 1866 Charles Folsom decided, after some hesitation, to study 
 medicine. A small and favored portion of the would-be medical stu- 
 dents of that period used to spend a few months in taking a preliminary 
 course of Comparative Anatomy under Professor Jeffries Wyman. 
 Dr. Folsom and I took this course together, and vividly do I remember 
 our first meeting. I can see myself lingering about, on a summer morn- 
 ing, in the cool hall-way of Boylston Hall, where Professor Wyman's 
 laboratory lay, watching the door swing open and observing the tall 
 figure of Charles Folsom enter. I well recall his boyish yet thoughtful 
 and intelligent expression, his pleasant smile, his light hair and sun- 
 burnt face, and his plain suit of homespun gray. We were entire 
 strangers to each other then, but on the moment a bond of mutual sym- 
 pathy was established and we became good friends. Professor Wyman, 
 that rare man and teacher whom every one admired, loved, and trusted, 
 soon recognized Dr. Folsom's ability and worth, and secured for him, a 
 few years later, the Curatorship of the Natural History Museum, a posi- 
 tion which he occupied for several years and abandoned with regret. 
 
 Between 1866 and 1869 came medical studies, diversified by half a 
 year's tutoring in Charlestown, New Hampshire, which secured 1 iin 
 some pleasant acquaintances and a gain in health, though it was felt 
 as a somewhat rasping interruption to his work. 
 
 The old custom of supplementing one's class-room studies by serving 
 as assistant in the private office of an established practitioner (even 
 during the medical course) was still followed, to some extent, at that 
 period, and in this way Dr. Folsom made, in 1868, the highly valued 
 acquaintance of Dr. H. I. Bowditch. In a letter to Mr. Gannett, 
 written in October of that year, he says: "Dr. Bowditch is simply 
 splendid. He is one of the purest-minded men I ever knew, and the op- 
 
 6 Not yet a medical student. 
 
DR. CHARLES FOLLEN FOLSOM. 9 
 
 portunities for study are very great." I had the privilege of following 
 Dr. Folsom at this task and can warmly testify to its value. The duty 
 of the assistant was to receive the patients in an anteroom of the delight- 
 ful study at the house on Boylston Street, make full notes of their histo- 
 ries, which were to be submitted afterwards to close scrutiny, and a 
 preliminary diagnosis. Then came the physical examination by Dr. 
 Bowditch, at which the student was often invited to assist, and the 
 frank comments of one of the best men' and best physicians of his day. 
 It w 7 as "section teaching" in its best form. Dr. Folsom's admiration 
 for Dr. Bowditch was so great and the understanding between them 
 became so fine, that the friendship then established proved one of the 
 great forces in Dr. Folsom's life. There was some question in the next ■ 
 year (1869) whether he should become assistant at the City Hospital or 
 at the Massachusetts General, for which he first applied. It was to the 
 former that he went, and he found reason to congratulate himself for 
 so doing, largely because it brought him again under Dr. Bowditch. 
 It was not alone admiration for Dr. Bowditch' s qualities as a man that 
 drew his younger friend so strongly, but similarity in sentiment and 
 opinion, likewise. Both of them had grown up in the atmosphere of 
 abolitionism, and Dr. Bowditch's ardent advocacy, both of that cause 
 and of the natural right of women to do w T hat nature fitted them to do 
 and especially to practice medicine if they wished, was met with 
 quick and active sympathy on Dr. Folsom's part. In later years his 
 cautious and conservative traits came more prominently forward, but 
 the sentiments by which he was mainly moved were always those of 
 unconventionality and freedom. 
 
 He strongly advocated the plan of putting a woman physician on the 
 medical board of Danvers Hospital and took an active part in further- 
 ing the admission of women to Johns Hopkins Medical School. In the 
 bibliography which follows this paper a reference will be found to an 
 address of his upon this latter subject. 
 
 The service at the City Hospital came to an end in the spring of 1870. 
 As soon as it was over Dr. Folsom opened an office on Leverett 
 Street and engaged in private practice, while at the same time he be- 
 came physician to the Massachusetts Infant Asylum, then recently 
 established. He was for a short time connected also with the Carney 
 Hospital. At these tasks he remained until the spring of 1872, when he 
 obtained a much desired position as assistant at the McLean Asylum, 
 then in the old familiar grounds at Somerville, and this he kept until 
 the autumn of 1873. He threw himself, indeed, at this period, with 
 great energy into the study of diseases of the mind, and came near to 
 selecting this branch of medicine for his life work. Even as late as 
 
10 DR. CHARLES FOLLEN FOLSOM. 
 
 1877 he writes to Mr. Gannett: "The bill has passed the Legislature 
 requiring the Governor to appoint trustees, etc., to Danvers, and the 
 question has been asked me square, whether I w'd be Supt. Although 
 I said no more in reply than that I would not say no, I have since de- 
 cided not to take it, and very largely because , who knows me for 
 
 generations back, has convinced me that I am in many respects un- 
 suited for that kind of work." 
 
 In the autumn of 1873 he went abroad for the sake of "seeing what - 
 asylums are there, etc." He was away about a year, studying 
 mainly in Vienna and Berlin, but visiting also the hospitals of England 
 and of Scotland and making valuable acquaintances. The full letters 
 from Europe during this period (1873-1874), both to the various mem- 
 bers of his family and to Mr. Gannett, show sound observation and an 
 active mind. He found the English asylums the best, though by no 
 means above criticism. The brutal manners of the Viennese doctors 
 towards the poorer patients disgusted him, but did not prevent him from 
 appreciating the splendid opportunities of these physicians for study 
 nor their quality as teachers. Man for man he liked his own country- 
 men the best. 
 
 While he was still away an event occurred which proved to be for 
 him of great significance. This was his selection for the secretary- 
 ship of the Massachusetts State Board of Health, just then thrown 
 open by the regretted death of Dr. George Derby, a position in which 
 an able physician could do more for the health of his fellow-citizens 
 than in any other way whatever. The State Board of Health had 
 then been in existence just four years. It had owed its life to the 
 imagination and splendid zeal of Dr. Bowditch, and its remarkable 
 development and career of usefulness at once to his labors and those of 
 his public-spirited and able colleagues, and to the energy and spirit 
 of Dr. Derby, fresh from service as army surgeon in the war and full 
 of interest in matters relating to the public health. The Board as a 
 whole was one of the best that ever served the State. Dr. Bowditch 
 had been. chairman from the first, and when the question came up of 
 the appointment of a successor to Dr. Derby it was natural that his 
 thoughts should turn to Dr. Folsom, young, free, of approved character 
 and ability, and possessed already of experience in administrative 
 work. 6 Dr. Derby died in June, 1874, and Dr. Folsom was appointed 
 
 6 Dr. Bowditch's personal friendship for Dr. Folsom is testified to by the 
 following note, evidently written at a period when observers had had a chance 
 to realize the quality of the new secretary. Friends of Dr. Bowditch will be 
 
DR. CHARLES FOLLEN FOLSOM. 11 
 
 on September 12 of the same year, the gap of four months having 
 been filled by Dr. F. W. Draper. The members of the Board at this 
 time, besides Dr. Bowditch, were J. C. Hoadley, C.E., David L. Web- 
 ster, Richard Frothingham, Robert T. Davis, M.D., and T. B. 
 Newhall. These same members served until 1879, when the depart- 
 ments of health, lunacy and charity were combined and Dr. Folsom 
 was chosen secretary of the united Board. 
 
 Dr. Folsom believed that in accepting the appointment as secretary 
 of the State Board of Health he was shaping his life-work, and in the 
 letter to Mr. Gannett, above cited, he continues: "Of course, you can 
 never appreciate the disappointment it cost me to give up the practice 
 of medicine. It seemed like having in my palm something for which I 
 had bent every energy for a dozen years, and then calmly throwing it 
 away, and the silly hankering took shape in Danvers as the only practi- 
 cable form; but that is now gone, like all my other buried hopes at 
 which I can now smile and joke." 
 
 The occupations of the conscientious secretary of such a board as 
 this, certainly of tins board, are but faintly indicated in his title. His 
 duties cannot all be specified in detail and he does much that passes 
 unrecorded. Besides his labors as recording and executhe officer, 
 nothing goes on that does not pass his judgment, feel his touch, receive 
 his contribution. He is the nucleus of the busy cell. The reports are 
 in great part his work, and it is a striking tribute to Dr. Folsom's in- 
 dustry and ability that the volume which was issued on the first of 
 January, 1875, only three months after his appointment, was not only 
 ready at the proper time, but contained a long article by him, implying 
 careful study, upon the meat supply of our cities, with suggestions for 
 its improvement. One of the most important among the numerous and 
 manifold secretary's jobs, and a task that called for good feeling, tact, 
 and judgment of a high order, as well as for firmness and intelligence, 
 was that of going about as inspector, critic, and adviser among the 
 various towns and villages of the State, in the interests of sanitary re- 
 reminded by it of the generous warmth which he threw alike into his friend- 
 ships and his public work. 
 
 "Boston, June 25. 
 
 "My dear Dr., — I send by mail the Advertiser of to-day. I felt my heart 
 almost jump as I read the fine compliment paid to you my dear Dr. in the 
 editorial. I certainly echo the wish that you may long continue to occupy 
 the position in which you are growing, not only in yourself, but in the estima- 
 tion and love of the community. God be praised that you dropped a letter 
 to me from Europe "just in the nick of time." . . . 
 
 " Faithfully yours, 
 
 "H. LB." 
 
12 DR. CHARLES FOLLEN FOLSOM. 
 
 form. It was after one of these trips, in November, 1877^ that the 
 North Adams Transcript published a long editorial, impressive with 
 figures and with facts, the opening paragraphs of which here follow. 
 
 "As stated in a previous issue, Dr. Charles F. Folsom, Secretary of 
 the State Board of Health, recently visited our village for the purpose 
 of making a thorough investigation into its sanitary condition. For the 
 limited time which he spent here, his work was been remarkably thor- 
 ough, and the results of his examination, which we publish in full, are 
 of a nature calculated to startle our citizens and awaken a profound in- 
 terest in an important and heretofore neglected subject." 
 
 The inv estigations with which Dr. Folsom became especially iden- 
 tified (besides the question of meat-supply, above referred to) in the 
 five years that followed his appointment, related to water-supply and 
 the disposal of sewage, vital statistics, and his old love, — diseases of the 
 mind. On these vast problems he made himself an expert, so far as this 
 could be done without actual laboratory work. For this he was not 
 trained, but what he did and what his mental constitution admirably 
 fitted him to do was to scrutinize and estimate and contrast and after- 
 ward to summarize the work of other men, in Europe and at home, and 
 then intelligently to form a plan suited for Massachusetts and for 
 Boston. One reason why the work of the State Board at the period of 
 Dr. Folsom's service was so largely given up to questions of water- 
 supply and drainage and the disposal of sewage was that these subjects 
 had begun to attract the public interest in a high degree. This led 
 to legislation by the State authorities and permission to employ experts, 
 the results of whose investigations are given in the successive annual 
 reports. In these inquiries the City of Boston took an active part, and 
 the problem of its sewerage was studied in 1875-1876 by a special 
 commission, consisting of E. S. Cheesborough and Moses Lane as 
 representing the department of civil engineering, and Dr. Folsom as 
 standing for the- interests of the public health. This commission was 
 appointed by the city government in February, 1875, only a few months 
 after the nomination of Dr. Folsom to the position of Secretary to the 
 State Board of Health, and the choice of him as a member may there- 
 fore be considered as a recognition of his merits. The commission was 
 called on to consider, one by one, a series of important practical prob- 
 lems relating to the sewerage system of the city and the modes by which 
 it could be bettered. One portion of the investigation consisted in a 
 study of the methods of dealing with the sewage-waste adopted in other 
 cities of America and Europe and the experiments in utilizing it through 
 irrigation-farms. The investigation of these matters necessitated an- 
 other trip to Europe on Dr. Folsom's part (in 1875), during which the 
 
DR. CHARLES FOLLEN FOLSOM. 13 
 
 material was collected which was published as an appendix to the 
 report of the commission. The plan recommended in this report was, 
 as is well known, the building of the great system of the Metropolitan 
 intercepting-sewer for that portion of the city lying on the south side 
 of the Charles River, with pumping stations at Moon Island, discharg- 
 ing on ebb-tide into the bay. Dr. Folsom afterwards appeared before 
 the Joint Committee on Improved Sewerage and presented an elab- 
 orate defence and explanation of this plan, contrasting it with that 
 offered by the Superintendent of Sewers, which he admitted to be 
 cheaper but believed to represent a false economy. The plan advised 
 by the commission was finally adopted, and was carried out, and has 
 proved, in many ways, remarkably successful. The same principle was 
 applied later to the north side. The preliminary investigation had 
 been thorough, the reasoning based on it was convincing, and the con- 
 clusions were conservative and sound. Besides contributing to the 
 able and impressive reports made by this commission and by the State 
 Board of Health, with all their many maps and tables, Dr. Folsom read 
 a paper before the American Statistical Association, in April, 1877, in 
 which the sewage-farm question in particular was discussed, on the 
 basis of a remarkable amount of knowledge and of judgment. Other 
 communications on this and kindred subjects had appeared in the 
 Boston Medical and Surgical Journal in the form of letters written 
 during his trip abroad. 
 
 As soon as the work of the board with reference to water-supply and 
 drainage began to relax, Dr. Folsom turned his attention again to the 
 duties of the State with relation to insanity and to the general question 
 of the treatment of the insane. In 1877 he published the long article on 
 this subject entitled Diseases of the Mind, which was republished in 
 book form. This excellent monograph reviews the history of the treat- 
 ment of insane patients from the earliest times, and describes with 
 accuracy what was being done and what was being planned in all the 
 great institutions of Europe and America. It tells a striking and 
 highly interesting story. The materials for this work had been collected 
 partly during his visit to Europe in 1875, when he had industriously 
 visited asylums and formed the acquaintance of several prominent 
 alienists, especially in England. With him acquaintance was more 
 than apt to ripen into friendship, and such was the case as regaFds his 
 relationship to Dr. T. S. Clouston of Edinburgh, perhaps the leading 
 alienist of Great Britain at that day, and a man of warm and fine per- 
 sonal qualities which attracted Dr. Folsom strongly. The friendship 
 between them was strengthened by subsequent visits to Edinburgh on 
 Dr. Folsom's part and a* visit by Dr. Clouston to America. Several of 
 
14 DR. CHARLES FOLLEN FOLSOM. 
 
 Dr. Folsom's patients spent some time at the pleasant institution of 
 Morningside, under Dr. Clouston's care. 
 
 It was within a year after the publication of this paper that Dr. Fol- 
 som was offered and declined the superintendency of Dangers Hos- 
 pital, as above described. 
 
 The work of the State Board of Health, extensive as it was, did not 
 prevent him, at this period, from giving a certain amount of time to 
 private practice, especially among the insane, nor from lecturing at 
 the Harvard Medical School. His connection with this school began 
 in 1877 and continued until 1888. He served first as lecturer on hy- 
 giene, then gave instruction in both hygiene and mental diseases, and 
 finally became assistant professor of Mental Diseases. His resigna- 
 tion was prompted partly by the lack of proper clinical facilities for 
 teaching, partly by the fact that he had finally decided to withdraw 
 from the exclusive study of diseases of the mind and to devote himself 
 to the work of a general practitioner and consultant. But this is to 
 anticipate, as we still have several interesting years of public work 
 to chronicle. 
 
 I have sketched the principal features of his labors as secretary of 
 the State Board of Health as far as 1879. In that year two events of 
 importance for him occurred, namely, the appointment of the Yellow 
 Fever Commission, of which he was made a member, and the sub- 
 merging of the Board of Health in the combined Board of Health, 
 Lunacy, and Charity, of which he was appointed secretary and of which 
 he was made a member in the following year. 
 
 The yellow fever epidemic of 1879-1880 ravaged several of the South- 
 ern States, especially those bordering on the Mississippi River, and the 
 National Advisory Commission was appointed to inspect the infected 
 districts and consult with local authorities and officers of public health. 
 As a member of this commission Dr. Folsom visited a number of South- 
 ern cities, especially Memphis and New Orleans, and left behind him a 
 pleasant impression of tact, judgment, and good breeding, of which 
 Dr. H. P. Walcott, Dr. Folsom's successor on the Board of Health, 
 still found traces on the occasion of a visit, many years later, to the 
 same localities. The most important result of the trip for Dr. Folsom 
 himself was, however, that it brought him into close contact with Dr. 
 John S. Billings, and laid the basis for one of those enduring friend- 
 ships in which he was so rich. 7 This same outbreak of yellow fever 
 
 1 In a recent letter Dr. Billings writes: "From my first acquaintance 
 with him I had the greatest respect for his judgment, and the frank honesty 
 of the way he gave it, and as we became intimately associated the friendship 
 grew into a warm affection which continued to the end. He was a model 
 
DR. CHARLES FOLLEN FOLSOM. 15 
 
 formed the occasion for the establishment of the National Board of 
 Health, and of this Dr. Billings and Dr. H. I. Bowditch were appointed 
 members. There were thus several ties that bound Dr. Folsom's in- 
 terest to the work of this important Board, and it was only natural that 
 on Dr. Bowditch's retirement, in 1882, Dr. Folsom should be chosen 
 his successor. The work of the Board by that time, to be sure, was 
 already waning under the inanition treatment to which it was sub- 
 jected by the government at Washington, and in the few remaining 
 years of its life it did but little active work. Nevertheless, it served to 
 cement still closer the bond of friendship between Dr. Folsom and Dr. 
 Billings, and also brought the former into wider notice among public 
 men. 
 
 The absorption of the Board of Health into the combined Board of 
 Health, Lunacy and Charity, was a matter of profound regret to Dr. 
 Folsom as to Dr. Bowditch, and to all their colleagues. They felt that 
 the co-operative effectiveness of the small group of men who had learned 
 to work so well together was likely to be impaired, and with no com- 
 pensating benefit. Dr. Bowditch who was appointed on the new Board, 
 but resigned almost at once, partly to gain more time for other labors, 
 partly as a means of expressing his disapproval. Dr. Folsom was made 
 secretary of the new Board, at first with special duties relative to the 
 health department, but resigned in January, 1881, just a year 
 after Dr. Bowditch. He had identified himself with many of the im- 
 portant measures that were adopted by the Board during his brief term 
 of service, and lent his aid to carry into effect a scheme which then, 
 perhaps, seemed to most onlookers to be of much less consequence 
 than it later proved. This was the appointment by the State Board of 
 carefully selected women, from the different towns throughout the 
 State, to act as " Auxiliary Visitors" to the State Board of Health, 
 Lunacy, and Charity, in looking after the girls from the State Primary 
 School at Monson, and the State Industrial School at Lancaster, as 
 well as those committed to the custody of the board itself and placed out 
 with relatives or in other families, while still remaining wards of the 
 State. The appointment of these visitors increased very materially 
 the value of the Board's work in that direction. Similar work had 
 been going on for some years, on a small scale, as an informal outgrowth 
 of the efforts of a few women who had been assisting Colonel Gardiner 
 Tufts, Superintendent of the State Visiting Agency, but it was of great 
 
 citizen, giving time and skilled labor to public interests without a thought of 
 personal benefit — a skilled physician, beloved by his patients, and a gentle- 
 man in all the best senses of that word. I am proud of the fact that he was my 
 friend." 
 
16 DR. CHARLES FOLLEN FOLSOM. 
 
 importance to have the system adopted by the State P^pard, its value 
 recognized, and its work established on a larger scale. 
 
 Besides serving on the State Board Dr. Folsom gave much time 
 during the early eighties to the Danvers Lunatic Hospital, in the es- 
 tablishment of which he had been greatly interested and of which he 
 had been made trustee. In 1881 he read an excellent paper entitled 
 "The Management of the Insane," before the Hospital Trustees As- 
 sociation, discussing and forecasting the conditions needed to make a 
 hospital fulfil its possibilities of efficiency. As usual, practical good 
 sense, thorough information and earnest desire for reform inspire its 
 pages, on one of which he refers to his studies made during five visits in 
 different years to Great Britain. Another paper, on "The Relation of 
 the State to the Insane," was read at the American Medical Associa- 
 tion this same year. 
 
 In the following year, 1882, occurred the trial of Guiteau for the 
 assassination of President Garfield, followed by his condemnation and 
 execution, notwithstanding the protest of a large number of the best 
 physicians of the country. Dr. Folsom took part in the public dis- 
 cussion of the merits of this case, and in so doing revived an interest 
 in medical jurisprudence which had expressed itself, even in 1875, in 
 a paper entitled "Limited Responsibility: a Discussion of the Pome- 
 roy Case," in 1877 by an article on "Medical Jurisprudence in New 
 York," and in 1880 by an account of "Cases of Insanity and of Fa- 
 naticism," devoted mainly to the remarkably interesting case of Free- 
 man, the religious fanatic of the quiet village of Pocasset on Cape Cod 
 who had killed a favorite child under a supposed Divine command. 
 The study of such borderland cases, involving questions of moral and 
 of legal responsibility, continued, indeed, to interest him throughout 
 his life, and it is well known to his friends that he analyzed with 
 extreme care, through several years, the data in the noted case of 
 Jane Toppan. Pomeroy and Jane Toppan he believed to be essen- 
 tially criminals, Guiteau insane. Freeman he rightly judged a crank 
 of the fanatic type, a product of his environment, and only technically 
 insane. He kept close watch of Freeman from the beginning onward, 
 was instrumental in securing his release on probation from the asylum 
 in which he was confined, and rejoiced at the continued reports of his 
 subsequent good behavior, which have continued to come in even 
 to the present day. 
 
 In 1881 Dr. Folsom was appointed visiting physician to the City 
 Hospital, and it was largely on his account that a ward was established 
 there for the study and treatment of nervous diseases. Of this ward 
 Dr. S. G. Webber and he were made physicians. Strictly speaking, 
 

Please insert this slip on page 16 of the Memoir of 
 Dr. C. F. Folsom. 
 
 The account here given of the establishment of the ward foivjiervous 
 and renal diseases contains certain errors. The facts are that Dr. 
 Folsom's appointment in 1881 was not as visiting physician, but to the 
 out-patient service (see footnote to page 19), and that the ward here 
 referred to was established in 1877, at the request of Dr. R. T. Edes, 
 who had been for some years visiting physician to the hospital. Dr. 
 Edes and Dr. S. G. Webber were appointed (in 1878) as physicians to 
 the new ward. In 1882 Dr. James H. Denny was appointed as addi- 
 tional physician, but resigned after a short service. Dr. Webber re- 
 signed his service in 1885, and Dr. Edes in the following year, 1886. 
 Dr. Folsom was appointed in September, 1885, to succeed Dr. Webber. 
 By that time it had become customary to admit a larger number of 
 general medical cases to this service than at first ; and in 1886 it was 
 proposed to change the character of the service altogether, making it 
 simply a third medical service. This proposition was referred to a com- 
 mittee of which Dr. Folsom was a member, and was adopted on 
 December 22, 1886. 
 
DR. CHARLES FOLLEN FOLSOM. 17 
 
 the ward was devoted partly to nervous and partly to renal diseases, 
 but even thus it was the first neurological ward to be established in 
 Boston, and would stand, if it still existed, as the only department in 
 a public institution of this city, with the exception of the Long Island 
 Hospital, where disorders of the nervous system could be systemat- 
 ically and adequately taught and studied under expert supervision. 
 The ward continued to be thus used for several years, but was then 
 given over, to the great sorrow of onlooking neurologists, to the gen- 
 eral purposes of the hospital. At the same time Dr. Folsom became 
 a member of the regular visiting staff, and at about the same period 
 made a strong and indeed successful effort to change the character of 
 his private and consulting practice to that of an "internist" or gen- 
 eral practitioner. 
 
 In 1882 Dr. Folsom was appointed consulting physician to the 
 Adams Nervine Asylum. 
 
 In 1886, while still especially interested in nervous diseases, he 
 delivered six lectures on school hygiene, 8 one of which, "On the Rela- 
 tion of our Public Schools to the Disorders of the Nervous System," 
 was reprinted for distribution. This sort of task, in which his two- 
 fold instincts and training, as a hygienist and as a neurologist, were to 
 be enlisted in the practical service of a concrete set of public needs, 
 was a congenial one to him and was always well performed. 
 
 In the next year (1887) he took part in the discussion of another 
 topic of public interest, namely, whether the State should establish a 
 hospital for dipsomaniacs. To this plan he was opposed. 
 
 This is perhaps the proper place to mention that Dr. Folsom had 
 been warmly interested for many years in the question of the proper 
 treatment of prostitution. He studied this subject diligently, at home 
 and abroad, and wrote his views upon it at length to Mr. Gannett. 
 Unfortunately he did not publish them, and it would perhaps be unjust 
 to consider them as final. They are, however, of interest as an ex- 
 ample of his habitual generosity of sentiment. Like the majority of 
 cultivated men, and especially those who have labored practically in 
 the harness of organized progress, Dr. Folsom was conservative and 
 inclined to see two sides to every proposition. On the other hand, he 
 was by inheritance and by temperament a reformer, a hater of injustice, 
 of oppression, and of immorality. These sometimes conflicting tend- 
 encies were all drawn upon in his studies into the question of prosti- 
 tution. Whatever is to be said of the varied influences and motives 
 
 8 Given before the teachers in the public schools, under the auspices of 
 the Massachusetts Emergency and Hygiene Association. 
 
18 DR. CHARLES FOLLEN FOLSOM. 
 
 at work, the observation of those who fall, he writes, "increases one's 
 admiration for those many persons in all stations of life who lead 
 lives of purity and nobleness, and to whom trial and temptation only 
 give added purity and strength. If people will only place their ideals 
 
 high enough, they easily or with a fight may make them real. does 
 
 not believe this, but I know it." 
 
 In the spring of 1886 Dr. Folsom was married to Martha Tucker 
 Washburn, sister of his classmate William T. Washburn, and this for- 
 tunate event filled with happiness and serenity the whole remainder 
 of his life. Domestic, affectionate, home-loving, and hospitable, his 
 marriage brought to him as much fulness of satisfaction as any of 
 his friends could have desired. It gave new scope, too, to his hospital- 
 ity and his strong social instincts, for these traits were eminently 
 characteristic of his wife also, and their table became well known as 
 one where good talk, good fellowship, and good humor in the best 
 sense were to be found. Dr. Folsom had had a wide experience with 
 men, with books, and with affairs; he had a good memory, a good 
 sense of humor, a fondness for a good story and the capacity to tell 
 one, and these characteristics, combined with his real love for his 
 fellow-men, made him a highly acceptable companion. 
 
 For a number of years he had been very busy in his private prac- 
 tice and his marriage only increased his zeal in this respect and his 
 opportunities for conducting his work as he desired. To an unusual 
 degree he treated his patients as his friends and made them welcome 
 visitors at his house. This tendency, which was instinctive with him 
 and formed a part of his desire to lead a life which should bring him 
 into close contact "with individuals needing help," was thoroughly 
 sympathized in and actively forwarded by his wife, and materially 
 increased his power for good. 
 
 As a diagnostician and practitioner Dr. Folsom was a careful, accu- 
 rate observer, sound and conservative in judgment and resourceful 
 in meeting practical needs, and it was these qualities rather than an 
 ability and instinct for scientific investigation that brought him his 
 success. His contributions to what might be called pure science 
 were in fact not numerous, and became less so as time went on. It 
 was always the vision of "the individuals needing help " that led him 
 on. The worrying habit might readily have developed itself in him, 
 but he systematically discouraged this tendency and opposed to it a 
 simple and gentle philosophy of living which methodical, well-ordered 
 habits aided to make effective. Generosity was a constant trait through- 
 out his life and for nearly twenty years he contributed substantially 
 to the support of a brother who was ill, and even to the very last to 
 
DR. CHARLES FOLLEN FOLSOM. 19 
 
 the education of nieces and nephews. That it was a joy to him to do 
 this, as it had been to contribute to the comfort of his parents' declin- 
 ing years, is shown by the following extract from a letter written in 
 1901: "Just now I am sending two nieces to school and a nephew 
 to college, and hiring an outside man for my brother, who is ill. Many 
 of the other things I do not care for, it is such a pleasure and such a 
 privilege to do these." His sister writes: "What he was to us all as 
 counsellor could n't well be told — it includes a much wider family 
 circle of cousins and broadens into the same service for patients and 
 friends." 
 
 Dr. Folsom's public services did not cease with his resignation from 
 the State Board. In 1891 he was chosen overseer of Harvard College, 
 and to this important post he was repeatedly re-elected, until he had 
 served twelve years. In the spring of 1896 he was one of the com- 
 mission appointed by the Governor and Council "to investigate the 
 public charitable and reformatory interests and institutions of the 
 Commonwealth ; to inquire into the expediency of revising the system 
 of administering the same, and of revising all existing laws in regard 
 to pauperism and insanity, including all laws relating to pauper 
 settlements," etc. The other members of this commission were Mr. 
 William F. Wharton and Professor Davis R. Dewey. Their report, 
 covering a hundred printed pages, was submitted in February, 1897. 
 In 1901 he was offered — so his letters show — the chairmanship of 
 the State Board of Lunacy, but decided to decline this tempting offer. 
 "Think," he writes, "of following in Dr. Howe's footsteps with twice 
 as big a field." In 1903 he was selected as president of the Harvard 
 Medical School Alumni Association. Truly, a rare list of honors and 
 opportunities for service. 
 
 As early as 1898 Dr. Folsom resigned his position as visiting physi- 
 cian to the Boston City Hospital,^ "long before his usefulness to the 
 institution began to wane," a colleague writes, 10 and although he was 
 chosen consulting physician in 1901, this appointment was one rather 
 of honor than of active service. The fact was, as many of his friends 
 observed, that Dr. Folsom's policy for several years before his last 
 
 9 The whole period of Dr. Folsom's active work in connection with the 
 City Hospital, not including his service as assistant, was from December, 1881, 
 to the time of his resignation in 1898. He was first appointed Physician 
 to Out-Patients (December, 1881), then Physician to Out-Patients with Dis- 
 eases of the Nervous System (November, 1882), then Visiting Physician to 
 Patients with Diseases of the Nervous System (September, 1885), and finally 
 member of the general visiting staff (December, 1886). After his resignation 
 in 1898, he was appointed Consulting Physician in 1901. 
 
 10 Editorial, Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, August 29, 1907. 
 
20 DR. CHARLES FOLLEN FOLSOM. 
 
 visit to Europe had been to withdraw from unnecessary labors, not 
 on account of obvious ill health, and surely not from indolence, but 
 from prudence. In 1899 his horse fell with him, and this accident cost 
 him a broken rib and an attack of pleurisy, and marks the period sub- 
 sequent to which his strength and power of work were never quite 
 what they had been before. In 1901 he writes to Mr. Gannett : " I am 
 
 sorry that I do not write to oftener and to you and to and 
 
 that I do not do a lot of extra things in the way of work of all kinds 
 and of social duties and pleasures. But I discovered some time ago 
 that there was not enough of me to go around. Starting in debt and 
 having something to do for others all the time, one has to be economi- 
 cal of his strength if he is going to practise medicine." 
 
 Many men would have met this need of economy of strength by 
 longer and more frequent holidays than he took. But, fond as he 
 was of the country, of travel, of new friends, his habit of long years 
 had been to husband his strength by careful living, and not to separate 
 himself far or for long from his patients and his desk. Perhaps he 
 knew himself better than his advisers knew him when he chose this 
 mode of life, or accepted it as a satisfactory one when it seemed forced 
 upon him by his duties. His recreation lay in friendly intercourse, in 
 horseback riding, and, of late years, in absences of short duration at 
 Little Boar's Head, New Hampshire, where he and his wife, with 
 several friends, spent a number of consecutive summers. The final 
 visit to Europe, which at best was to have been of but two months 
 duration, was looked forward to by both his wife and himself with the 
 greater pleasure for the fact that it had been so long postponed. He 
 was pretty well tired before starting, but in essential ways had seemed 
 as well and as serene as common. Perhaps, in fact, he felt less well 
 than he admitted. At any rate, even on the passage outward he 
 seemed poorly, and when in England a constant though slight fever 
 set in and he was unable to obtain the expected pleasure from the 
 visits and excursions that he made. While in London he consulted 
 physicians, among them Sir Lauder Brunton and Sir Almroth Wright, 
 but without avail. During the voyage homeward his fever increased 
 to a high point and he became delirious. On arriving in New York 
 he was taken to the Roosevelt Hospital and carefully tended by Dr. 
 Walter B. James. Here he lay for several weeks, at times improving 
 slightly, at times worse again, but on the whole gradually losing 
 ground. Much of the time his mind wandered a little, but it was 
 striking to note how fully he retained his characteristic patience and 
 his unmurmuring readiness to accept results, whatever they might be. 
 Perhaps he felt sure from the first that he should not get well, and 
 
DR. CHARLES FOLLEN FOLSOM. 21 
 
 certainly he once said that he knew he was approaching his end and 
 that " the clock had struck twelve;" but this may be taken rather as a 
 temperamental note of acquiescence than as a conclusion based on 
 evidence. He died at last quietly and without pain. 
 
 The examination showed that he had been suffering from an ulcera- 
 tive, infective endocarditis, with embolisms, to which it was thought 
 his old valvular heart-disease had rendered him susceptible. 
 
 It would be easy to multiply testimonials to the character and abil- 
 ity of Dr. Folsom from the words — spoken, written, or printed — of 
 his colleagues and his friends. Perhaps, however, the most fitting 
 close to this brief sketch is given in the final paragraphs of a private 
 letter from Mr. Gannett, who was the oldest and probably the closest 
 of Dr. Folsom's friends. After referring to the fact that at each new 
 meeting following a long interval of separation he found him always 
 "hard at work, the same loyal friend, simple, modest, gentle, high- 
 minded, lovable . . . yet growing in power and in service, . . ." Mr. 
 Gannett goes on to say, "It is strange how well one can know a man's 
 self while knowing so little of his works and days. The reason, no 
 doubt, lies in the same loyalty, — he was loyal to himself ; through 
 his growth and success he remained the same man I knew in our 
 youth. I was always grateful for his holding on to me, and counted 
 it an honor. And it seems so easy to hold on to him now for the same 
 reason, — now when his greeting no longer waits me in Boston. I 
 happened yesterday to be looking up something about George William 
 Curtis, and came across what Mr. Roosevelt — not yet even Gov- 
 ernor — said of him at some club in New York City, not long after 
 his death. He spoke of the serene purity and goodness of character 
 which impressed every one who came in contact with Curtis, — and 
 then said, 'I have used the adjective serene, it is a beautiful adjective, 
 and it is the only adjective I know of which is sufficiently beautiful to 
 describe his beautiful character.' I think of Folsom in that way, — 
 the adjective and the noun, and the whole expression apply well 
 to him." 
 
 A testimonial of another form deserves especial mention. A large 
 number, nearly seventy, of his friends and patients, "who wished in 
 this way to express their grateful appreciation of Dr. Folsom's unfail- 
 ing care and skill as a physician, and their admiration for him as a 
 man " (Harvard Bulletin, March 4, 1908), presented Harvard Univer- 
 sity with a fund of ten thousand dollars for the establishment in the 
 Harvard Medical School of "The Charles Follen Folsom Teaching 
 Fellowship," in Hygiene or in Mental and Nervous Diseases. The 
 issue of the Bulletin in which this gift was announced contains also an 
 
22 DR. CHARLES FOLLEN FOLSOM. 
 
 editorial upon Dr. Folsom which concludes as follows: "But it was 
 not as an authority on public health and on mental and nervous dis- 
 eases or as a College officer that his former patients and colleagues 
 have sought to perpetuate his name in an institution which he loved 
 so well. It was as a friend, perhaps as a host to whom entertaining 
 was a fine art, that they knew him. Wise, firm, kind, and indefatig- 
 able, he rarely departed from a sick-room without leaving his patient 
 stronger in mind, if not in body. His constant thoughtfulness of his 
 charges, in health as in illness, was unending, and many a patient owes 
 a sound mind and a sound body to Charles Folsom's sagacity, skill, 
 and loving care. Indeed, it may be said of him more truly than of 
 many physicians and of most men that he was like "rivers of water 
 in a dry place and the shadow of a great rock in a weary land." 
 
 James J. Putnam. 
 
 PRINCIPAL PUBLICATIONS I 
 
 A Scotch Insane Asylum. Boston Med. and Surg. Jour., Aug. 12, 1875. 
 The Treatment of Insanity in England and America. 
 
 Ibid., Dec. 9, 1875. 
 Report by a Commission on the Sewerage of Boston. 1876. 
 
 The Present Aspect of the Sewerage Question. 1877. 
 
 Diseases of the Mind and other Papers. State Board of Health, 1877. 
 Causes of Typhoid Fever. Bost. Med. and Surg. Jour., March 4, 1880. 
 
 Cases of Insanity and Fanaticism. Ibid., March 11, 1880. 
 
 Four Lectures on Insanity. 
 
 Bost. Med. and Surg. Jour., May 13, July 8, 15, and 22, 1880. 
 Vital Statistics of Massachusetts. 
 
 39th Report to the Legislature of Massachusetts relating to the Registry 
 and Return of Births, Marriages, and Deaths for year ending Dec. 31, 
 1880. 
 
 The Early Diagnosis of Progressive Paralysis of the insane. 
 
 Bost. Med. and Surg. Jour., June 16, 1881. 
 The Relation of the State to the Insane. Ibid., Aug. 4, 1881. 
 
 The Management of the Insane. Ibid., Sept. 22, 1881. 
 
 The Crime at Washington and its Lesson. 
 
 Editorial Ibid., July 14, 1881. 
 Recent Progress in Mental Disease. Ibid., Oct 27, 1881. 
 
 The Case of Guiteau. Ibid., Feb. 16, 1882. 
 
 Some Obscure Mental Symptoms of Disease. Ibid., Aug. 17, 1882. 
 
 The Responsibility of Guiteau. American Law Review, 1882. 
 
 40th Report to the Legislature of Massachusetts relating to the 
 
 Registry and Return of Births, Marriages, and Deaths for the 
 
 Year ending Dec. 31, 1881. 
 
DR. CHARLES FOLLEN FOLSOM. 23 
 
 Two Cases of Injury to the Back. 
 
 Bost. Med. and Surg. Jour., Jan. 24, 1884 
 
 General Paralysis in the Prodromeal Period. Ibid., Nov. 5, 1885 
 
 Six Lectures on School Hygiene and the Relation of our Public 
 
 Schools to the Disorders of the Nervous System. 1886 
 
 Mental Diseases. 
 
 Amer. System of Medicine, Vol. V. Reprinted Oct. 25, 1886 
 Cases of Multiple Neuritis. Ibid., May 19, 1887 
 
 The Early Stages of General Paralysis. 
 
 Bost. Med. and Surg. Jour., Oct. 3, 1889 
 Treatment in Typhoid Fever. Ibid., Dec. 5, 1889 
 
 Disorders of Sleep, Insomnia. Ibid., July 3, 1890 
 
 Some Points Regarding General Paralysis. Ibid., Sept. 3, 1891 
 
 Address at the Opening of Johns Hopkins Medical School for Women 
 
 1891 
 Henry Ingersoll Bowditch. 
 
 Amer. Acad. Arts and Sci., 1892. Vol. XXVIII 
 Cases of Traumatic Headache. Ibid., June 28, 1894 
 
 The Prevalence and Fatality of Pneumonia. Ibid., July 16, 1896 
 
 Report of the Committee to Investigate the Public Charitable and 
 Reformatory Interests and institutions of the State. Feb., 1897 
 Address Harvard Medical Alumni Association. Oct., 1903 
 
 SOCIETIES OF WHICH DR. FOLSOM WAS A MEMBER BESIDES 
 THOSE MENTIONED IN THE TEXT. 
 
 Association of American Physicians. Original Member; later, Hon. 
 
 Member. 
 American Medical Society. 
 Massachusetts Medical Society. 
 Massachusetts Medico-Legal Society. 
 Suffolk District Medical Society. 
 Society of Psychiatry and Neurology. 
 Boston Society of Medical Improvement. 
 American Academy of Arts And Sciences. 
 American Statistical Association. 
 American Social Science Association. 
 American Association for the Advancement of Science. 
 National Geographical Society. 
 Boston Society of Natural History. 
 Reading Masters Society. 
 St. Botolph Club. * 
 
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 
 
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