Disease of the mind : Notes on the early management, European and American progress, modern methods, etc. in the treatment of insanity, with especial reference to the needs of Massachusetts and the United States / by Charles F. Folsom.

  • Charles Follen Folsom
Date:
1877
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Disease of the mind : Notes on the early management, European and American progress, modern methods, etc. in the treatment of insanity, with especial reference to the needs of Massachusetts and the United States / by Charles F. Folsom. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    ladies] and 8,893 days of labor. In scientific work, full trials have shown that colored light has no greater power in the cure of insanity than colored water in the treatment and cure of the diseased stomach of an inebriate. At the Retreat, in Hartford, a delightful amusement-room is open to the patients through the day, and is often pleasantly filled in the evening. Within a couple of years, too, a chapel* has been built, through the munificence of friends of the asy- lum, a little way from the other buildings, and in every respect like those for sane people. The daily evening service and the Sunday exercises, with the walk in the open space, give the patients a feeling of self-respect which they cannot have when constantly reminded of their infirmities by guarded windows everywhere and other indications of their deprivation of free- dom. Present Condition. At the same time, in the words of one of our most distin- guished alienists, the general propositions (of the American Association of Superintendents) in regard to the construction and organization of hospitals, and the general management of the insane (in the United States), have all, or nearly all, now stood the test of a quarter of a century's trial,f which is equivalent to saying that there has been little advance in that time. In construction and internal arrangement, the best Ameri- can hospitals for the insane are not excelled by those in any part of the world, with the exceptions that they usually have insufficient provision for the employment and occupa- tion of the patients; that they have no hospital-wards and nurses, where such patients as require them may get the benefit of quiet, rest, and the care aud attention common in ordinary hospitals ; and that the restrictions upon the liberty of the inmates have not, in all cases diminished to corre- spond with our advance in knowledge and with improvements in other parts of the world. These defects we share with most of the countries on the continent of Europe. *This is, so far as known, the first in this country (i. e., the first like those in ordi- nary life) although they are not uncommon elsewhere. t It is interesting to compare this with the statement, in 1862, of Damerow, the leader of the conservative party in Germany, that there is nothing further to be got in the future to improve the public institutions for the care and cure of the insane!
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