A letter to Benjamin Rotch, Esq., chairman of the committee of visitors; on the plan and government of the additional lunatic asylum for the County of Middlesex, about to be erected at Colney Hatch / by John Conolly.

Date:
1847
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A letter to Benjamin Rotch, Esq., chairman of the committee of visitors; on the plan and government of the additional lunatic asylum for the County of Middlesex, about to be erected at Colney Hatch / by John Conolly. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    prise, and sometimes greatly to his mortification. The usual consequence of this is, an eventual retracing of their steps ; but, in the mean time, great mischief may be done; and as all the officers quickly perceive any disposition in the governors to view the physician with distrust, those among them who are not Avell affected to him become unscrupulous in their attempts to injure or undermine him. A Committee of sensible and high-minded gen- tlemen should discourage all this meanness; should place implicit confidence in a well-chosen physician, and remove him if found unworthy of it. They should not interfere with the details of the asylum, or permit those who ought to be the physician’s assistants in his great work, to fret and tease him by hostile proceedings which they imagine are regarded by the Committee with a kind of secret pleasure. His authority should at least be thus far absolute, that he may command the services of every officer, not only in carrying out his general system, but in applying prompt and individual treatment and care wherever necessary. Without this many patients must be neglected, whom his care would, with such executive aid, improve ; and some will become incurable in whom an individual- ised treatment would have led to recovery. I allude to all these points in the hope that your proposed Asylum will be opened unencumbered by any avoidable defect; and that in a building well considered, and with an original plan as free from faults as possible, the establishment may possess a sound and wholesome constitution. If I were myself at this time subject to the kind of usage which I have spoken of, I should not the less
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