Response to Gorelick

To the Editor: I am grateful that Dr. Gorelick brought to my attention the Spring Grove Center in Catonsville, Md., which claims to be the second-oldest state mental health hospital in the United States. I went to the web page he provided and found a very interesting and complicated history of the hospital changing functions and locations. The first hospital was built in Maryland in 1797; although it was planned for “lunatics,” an epidemic of yellow fever prompted its opening. The hospital was renamed several times. At times, it was run by private owners and admitted nonpsychiatric patients. In 1938, it was renamed Maryland Hospital of the Insane. That building was sold to the merchant Johns Hopkins after a new hospital was built in 1872 at its current location in Catonsville. Eastern State Hospital had been continuously operating as a public psychiatric hospital in the same location since 1824. On September 10, 2013, it was moved less than 1 mile away from its original location, with staff and patients, to a new facility using the same names for the three patient towers as the three patient buildings at the previous location.