The construction and government of lunatic asylums, and hospitals for the insane / By John Conolly.

  • John Conolly
Date:
1847
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The construction and government of lunatic asylums, and hospitals for the insane / By John Conolly. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    position. The idiot who is capable of playing and amusing himself is already, as M. Seguin observes, somewhat improved.* I can but regret that I had not time to watch the progress of this interesting schoo] from day to day, and to trace the growth of knowledge in the different pupils ; as of the first ideas of form and colour, into writing and drawing; the development of articulation and the power of verbal expression ; the ex- tension of memory to calculation ; the subsidence of gross propensities, and the springing forth and flourishing of virtuous emotions in a soil where, if even under the most favorable circumstances the blossoms and fruits are few, but for philanthropic culture all would be noxious or utterly barren. “The schools for the insane patients of the Bicétre, who are neither idiotic nor epileptic, exceed in interest, if possible, those of the Salpé- tricre. Male patients are better prepared in general than female patients to derive benefit from such instruction ; they are also more attentive and, perhaps, more able to receive various instruction. I have never seen more exquisite penmanship than that of some of the male patients; the draw- ings of some of them were most beautiful; and I will not attempt to describe the effect of their singing, although I can never lose the impres- sion of it. Here, too, as in the school at the Salpétriére, the most cheer- ing thing of all was to see the evident comfort and happiness created by the various and not fatiguing occupations of the schools; to witness the satisfaction with which the afflicted, the paralysed, the utterly incurable, exhibited the performances which they yet retained the power to accom- plish. If no other end were answered by the formation of schools, they ought to be established as recreative, palliative, remedial even, in every lunatic asylum. ABOLITION OF PERSONAL COERCION, The following account of the progressive introduction of what is called the Non-restraint System is extracted (with the permission of the editor of that work) from the article Lunatic Asylums, in the ‘ Supplement to the Penny Cyclopeedia,’ already quoted; andit is inserted as containing a brief relation of the principal facts, which are such as to interest every reader. ‘“‘No part of the treatment of insanity has of late years excited so much attention as the system adopted in several asylums of totally abolishing * Hygiene et Education des Idiots. Par Edouard Seguin. Paris, 1843. His larger and more recent work, ‘ Traitement Moral, Hygiéne, et Education des Idiots,’ &c. 1846, contains the amplest details of his method.
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