Carlos Frederick MacDonald

Who was Carlos Frederick MacDonald?

Carlos Frederick MacDonald was the psychiatrist that examined Leon F. Czolgosz after the assassination of U.S. President William McKinley. He was the Chairman of the State Board of Lunacy Commissioners.

MacDonald was born in Niles, Ohio, and attended the local schools. At age 16, he enlisted in the Sixth Ohio Volunteer Cavalry during the American Civil War participating in several battles including Antietam and Gettysburg. After the war, he spent a year in high school and then entered the Bellevue Hospital Medical College in New York City. He earned his M.D. in 1869. He interned at both the Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn, New York and at a small pox hospital during an epidemic for fifteen months.

In 1890, he was appointed as an assistant physician in the Flatbush Insane Asylum in New York and in 1873 he became superintendent of Flatbush. In 1876, he was appointed superintendent of the State Asylum for the Criminally Insane in Auburn, New York. He then managed the New York State Inebriate Asylum in Binghamton. He remained in both Auburn and Binghamton until 1880.