George Alder Blumer (also known as G. Alder Blumer) was born in Sunderland, England in 1857. He attended the medical school of the University of Edinburgh for one year before he came to the United States, and completed his medical education at the University of Pennsylvania in 1879. After a year of residency at Lankenau Hospital, Philadelphia, he was offered a position at the New York State Lunatic Asylum in Utica, New York, later the Utica State Hospital. When the superintendent Dr. John P. Gray died in 1886, Blumer assumed the superintendency. Blumer intervened when the New York State Commission on Lunacy threatened to take over theAmerican Journal of Insanity founded by Amariah Brigham in 1844 and owned by the hospital. Blumer arranged for the American Medico-Psychological Association, now the American Psychiatric Association, to purchase the journal, now theAmerican Journal of Psychiatry. Blumer served a number of years as editor. In 1899, he became superintendent of the private Butler Hospital in Providence, R.I., a post he held until his retirement in 1921. He served as president of the American Psychiatric Association in 1903-1904. As an asylum director he became known for his humanitarian treatment of patients.