Southard, Elmer Ernest, 1876-1920

Southard (Harvard, M.D. 1901) was Bullard Professor of Neuropathology at Harvard Medical School from 1909 to 1920 and first director of the Boston Psychopathic Hospital, 1912-1920. He had broad theoretical interests in the areas of mental illness and social pathology and instituted the team approach in clinical activities at the Boston Psychopathic Hospital. He was skilled in clinical pathology, gross anatomy and histology, and did research work on correlating behaviorial problems with lesions of the nervous system; this work included studies in connection with patients at the Waverley School for the Feeble-minded. He was instrumental in organizing laboratory activity in the state mental hospitals in Massachusetts and he was for many years pathologist to the State Board of Insanity and the Commission on Mental Disease. He felt psychiatry was closely allied with both general medicine and with social work and he influenced many practicioners via his administrative work in the state hospital system.

From the description of Papers of Elmer Ernest Southard, 1893-1940 (inclusive). (Harvard University). WorldCat record id: 281429716