State of the Lincoln Lunatic Asylum (instituted November 4, 1819) : [seventeenth report].

  • Lincoln Lunatic Asylum (Lincoln, England)
Date:
1841
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: State of the Lincoln Lunatic Asylum (instituted November 4, 1819) : [seventeenth report]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    the few last months, that at no very distant time, they will have the satisfaction of seeing; this noble Establishment a model for Institutions of a similar kind. But it is not on this account that they think it right to express their satisfaction at the progressive improvement, which they have observed in the discipline of the Asylum. The comfort and well being of its Inmates, and possibly in some instances the reasonable expectation of their cure depend, more than may at first sight be conceived, on the order and alacrity with which every Officer in his department co-operates in the common purposes of the Establishment. Want of harmony and kind feeling are sure to be followed by a relaxed state of discipline, and all these, as sources of discomfort and irritation, are likely to produce the most mischievous effects upon the Patient. “ This leads your Committee to notice a very beneficial change, which has been introduced by the Medical Superintendent, in the management of the Patients. They are induced to notice this, though it forms a part of the Medical Report, because it has entailed a trifling increase of expense by the employ¬ ment of a greater number of Keepers and of Nurses. The alteration consists in the substitution of vigilant superintendance for personal restraint, except perhaps on very rare occasions, and in extreme cases. Experience has abundantly proved, how injurious harsh treatment is to the morbidly irritable mind, and what beneficial effects flow from a steady course of gentleness and persuasion. True it is, that the readiest and the easiest remedy for violence that presents itself is coercion, and if there be not a sufficient number of attendants to keep a watchful guard over the insane during their paroxysms of violence, it is in fact the only remedy; but it is one, which in too many in¬ stances must be attended with cruelty and all its injurious consequences, and which nothing but the plea of necessity can excuse.” Extracts from the Report of the Resident Physician. “ The number of patients in the house who have been known at any time to meditate suicide is inconsiderable; nor are there more than two or three con¬ cerning whom any particular anxiety is usually felt on that point. There is some reason to believe that the tendency to self-destruction is aggravated, if not in many cases produced, by the close restraints to which lunatics are subjected, and which their excited imagination invests with unreal horrors. « The article of treatment in which the Resident Physician has thought it expedient to depart the most widely from the previous practice of the Asylum has been that, which relates to the personal coercion or forcible restraint of the refractory patients. Without any intention of derogating from the high character acquired by the Asylum, it appeared to him that the advantage resulting from the degree of restraint permitted and customary in it, at the period of his appoint¬ ment, was in no respect proportionable to the frequency of its application ; that
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