John Galt

John Minson Galt II (19 March 1819 – 18 May 1862) was a medical doctor who served as superintendent of the Eastern State Hospital in Williamsburg, Virginia. He was an important figure in the asylum reform movement who practiced and wrote about ideas that adhered to moral therapy. Galt considered himself as an expert on the mental health of African Americans. His views about race and slavery alienated him from his medical contemporaries.

Early life and education John Minson Galt II was born on March 19 1819 in Williamsburg, Virginia. Through his father, Galt was the descendent of Covenanters who were said to have been banished from Scotland in 1664. Also through his father, he was related to Bertrand Servant or Servienti, a French Huguenot who was a member of the House of Burgesses. His mother was Mary Dorothea Galt; his parents were third cousins. Kindness was a principle that inspired Galt. This is exemplified in the anecdotes that he reportedly refused increases to his salary and that he would feed his patients himself. His opinions about desegregation put him in opposition with his contemporaries, including figures such as Thomas Story Kirkbride and Amariah Brigham.

In May 1844, Galt was appointed chairman of an AMSAII committee created to investigate the creation of asylums for African Americans. Other members of this committee included Isaac Ray and Francis T. Stribling.

In his book Political Essays, published in 1852, he levelled an extensive criticism of abolitionism. He was 43 years old. It has been theorised that his death was compounded by the stress experienced during this event because Galt was forbidden to see his patients during it. He is buried in the Bruton Parish Church in Colonial Williamsburg.

Galt's decision to commit suicide was criticised by some of his contemporaries: they viewed it as him abandoning his patients during a vulnerable period. Due to the damaged caused by the American Civil War, many of Galt's progressive policies at the Eastern State Hospital were undone after his death.

At the 1897 meeting of the American Medico-Psychological Association, Theophilus Orgain Powell expressed sorrow that Galt's death ended the nearly century-long Galt dynasty of psychiatric care. He compared their collective legacy to that of the Tuke family. On Galt's interest in deinstitutionalization, psychiatrist James S. Reinhart praised him as being "100 years ahead of his time".

Although it has been argued that Galt was strongly influenced by the practices of English and French asylums, this view has been challenged with the assertion that Galt was instead inspired by asylums in the northern United States, which made the Eastern State Hospital markedly progressive in comparison to other southern asylums.