Nineteenth annual report of the Trustees of the State Lunatic Hospital at Northampton : October, 1874.

  • State Lunatic Hospital (Northampton, Mass.)
Date:
1875
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Nineteenth annual report of the Trustees of the State Lunatic Hospital at Northampton : October, 1874. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    for succor, assistance, or self-sacrifice in my behalf than upon some of these. When, through the representations and solicitations of their friends, or, as has not unfrequently occurred, from the dic¬ tates of their own better judgment, inebriates have consented to be placed in the hospital, or to remain in it, after commit¬ ment under the law relating to the insane, they have rarely remained sufficiently long to give.a reasonable hope of reform. They soon come to believe, or at least to a pretension of the belief, that they shall never again yield to the temptation of strong drink, that they have perfect command over their appetites in that respect, and that they may as well be at home as at the hospital. They become restless, impatient of restraint, and at length leave the institution after a residence so short that they might as well have never entered it. Of all who have been here, very few have remained more than three months. Of several who came with a declared deter¬ mination on the part of themselves and, in some cases, of their parents, that they should remain a year, not one has fulfilled his purpose. The one who remained the longest, and whose staying or going depended solely upon himself, is, I am happy to say, the best specimen of reformation that has left the hospital within the last ten years. In several other of these twelvemonth cases, the men were young, and still, to some extent, acknowledged allegiance to parental author¬ ity. These did not leave without consent of parents, but in one instance that consent was very soon obtained. The young man remained, not the intended year, but twenty-eight days. The instability of purpose and of will seems to char¬ acterize the parent as well as the child, sometimes on the paternal but oftener upon the maternal side. With a mother of average feminine sensibilities and sympathies, no young inebriate, judging from our observation, subjects himself to the restraints of a hospital much longer than he is so disposed. Under these circumstances reformation here has been rare. Of all the inebriates who have been discharged during my connection with the hospital, the number who have subse¬ quently wholly abstained from intoxicating drinks could be readily counted upon the fingers of one hand, with the thumb and perhaps a finger or two to spare. On the other hand,
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