William Alanson White, M.D—1870-1937

Dr. William A. White died at Washington on March 7, 1937. When, at the age of thirty-three, he was appointed Superintendent of St. Elizabeths Hospital, he had behind him eleven years of psychiatric experience on the staff of Binghamton (N. Y.) State Hospital. He served at St. Elizabeths Hospital for nearly thirty-four years, and these thirty-four years were truly eventful and fruitful. Keen, kindly, intellectually always alive and always searching, a man of philosophic breadth and yet truly practical, a mind in constant quest of a synthesis of what man knows about man and yet of the utmost simplicity and directness, he was as curious as he was courageous, both in his scientific and in his administrative work. To use his own expression, he worked hard and played hard; he was one of those rare individuals who, on the threshold of their chronological senium, remain young, progressive, and not only receptive to new ideas but ready to make proselytes to them in the open and with the conviction of genuine youth. A prodigious worker and a prolific writer, he left behind him a voluminous bibliography which includes classics such as the text book of Neurology and Psychiatry written in collaboration with his lifelong friend Smith Ely Jelliffe, the Outline of Psychiatry, and a number of works of lasting interest such as the Meaning of Disease, Twentieth Century Psychiatry, and Forty Years of Psychiatry. One could evaluate Dr. White equally as an admirable hospital administrator, as a keen writer, or as a teacher of psychiatry, and find that in each, his was no minor contribution in the administrative, literary and didactic fields. These aspects have all been adequately discussed by his colleagues and pupils in the various psychiatric publications.

There is one aspect of Dr. White's scientific life which is of particular moment, and this is his rôle in the history of American psychiatry. He started his medical career in the