Volume containing several publications bound together: The Annual report of the court of directors of the Eastern Lunatic Asylum (1851); Twenty-fourth annual report of the President and Directors of the Western Lunatic Asylum (1851); Report of the President and Directors of the Western Lunatic Asylum, for the fiscal years 1863-4, 1864-5; and Essays on asylums for persons of unsound mind: second series by John M. Galt (1853). Each report summarizes hospital data for the preceding year. The information presented includes a count of admitted and discharged patients, patient deaths, patient demographic information, length of stay, and summaries of diagnoses, prognoses, and patient outcomes. Further, the reports provide descriptions of the applied treatments for various mental illnesses observed. The records are evidence of the time in which they were created and contain insensitive language in the description of patients and symptoms.

A table of contents is handwritten on the work's flyleaf, and a note dated March 11, 1843, from Dr. John M. Galt (1819-1862), superintendent of the hospital, to Professor John Millington (1779-1868), is written across the title page.

The “Publick Hospital for Persons of Insane and Disordered Minds” was first proposed in Williamsburg, Virginia in 1766. A bill founding the hospital was approved in 1769. In 1770, construction of the hospital began. Patients were admitted beginning in October 1773, making the facility the first public institution in the United States constructed solely for mental healthcare (the only other hospital where mentally ill patients were treated prior was the Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia.) Over the years, the hospital had many names including “Eastern Lunatic State Hospital” and “Eastern Lunatic Asylum.” In 1894 the hospital's current name, Eastern State Hospital, was established.