Report ... for the year 1842 / By Thomas S. Kirkbride.

  • Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane
Date:
[1843]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report ... for the year 1842 / By Thomas S. Kirkbride. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    from home, unless there was a determination to perse- vere for a reasonable time in a trial of remedies. The Board of managers require payment to be made for thirteen weeks board of every uncured patient, remov¬ ed before that period, and contrary to the advice and consent of the Superintending Physician,—not with the wish to indicate this as sufficient for a trial of remedies, but only because, whenever a patient is removed without adequate reason, the payment of board for a less period, does not compensate the institution for the inconvenience and disadvantage attending such a course, and for the expense to which it has been subjected. Although the importance of these views are now generally conceded by professional men, it is proper they should be believed by the friends of patients. No one should ever be placed in any insane hospital, until his friends are thoroughly satisfied of the importance and necessity of the measure; and then, only in an institution, in whose organization and management they have entire confidence, and to the discretion and judge¬ ment of wdiose officers they are willing to submit the direction of the case. This kind of confidence and the influence of friends springing from it, is often of great importance, in enabling the officers of an institution to carry out many details in both medical and moral treatment and in pre¬ venting premature removals. Although in a few ins¬ tances the want of it has disappointed our hopes, I am happy to be able to say, that, generally, we have been most faithfully seconded in our endeavours, by the friends of patients. A strictly charitable institution like the Pennsylvania Hospital, depending for its principal support upon the contributions of the benevolent—its only object to relieve suffering humanity, and its income all expended for this purpose, and for this alone,—has the strongest reason
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