Insanity and idiocy in Massachusetts : report of the Commission on Lunacy, 1855 / by Edward Jarvis ; with a critical introduction by Gerald N. Grob.

  • Massachusetts. Commission on Lunacy (1854)
Date:
1971
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Insanity and idiocy in Massachusetts : report of the Commission on Lunacy, 1855 / by Edward Jarvis ; with a critical introduction by Gerald N. Grob. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    ment of a committee to study the problems related to mental illness and to offer recommendations. Out of this study came a second state hospital at Taunton, which opened its doors in the spring of 1854. The opening of a second public institution, however, did little to improve conditions within the Bay State. The number of mentally ill persons seemed to increase faster than the general population. Moreover, the Worcester hospital, once a model institution, had deteriorated to the point where its trustees described it as “one of the poorest, if not the very poorest, in the country.” The Committee on Public Charitable Institutions of the legislature, when informed of substandard conditions at Worcester, decided that the problems growing out of mental illness were so complex that an impartial and exhaustive analysis was required that would provide the basis for a more intelligent and enlightened policy. The legislature concurred, and the stage was set for one of the most significant investiga- tions of mental illness in the nineteenth century. Largely the work of Dr. Edward Jarvis, the Report on Insanity would lay down guidelines that helped to mold public policy toward mental illness not only in Massachusetts, but in the United States as well. In retrospect it is clear that the Report on Insanity failed to achieve the goal of meeting the challenges growing out of mental illness. Had it been successful, there probably would have been little necessity a century later to establish a national commission to study the problem anew and offer alternative policies. It would be easy, of course, to dismiss the Report on Insanity as the product of an age that lacked a “scientific psy- chiatry” or as a document produced by individuals operating in an intellectual and scientific vacuum. Most individuals, after all, like to feel that somehow their age is wiser and better informed than past generations, and that they are better equipped to “solve” age-old problems. The historian, on the other hand, cannot be so confident of the present nor so harsh about the past. Countless generations have often seen their dreams frustrated and their vaunted knowledge seemingly incapable of comprehending all of the factors that influenced events. To understand fully the Report on Insanity requires not only a knowledge of the immediate circumstances that gave rise to this 3] have treated the history of the Worcester hospital and the development of public policy toward mental illness in Massachusetts in The State and the Mentally Ill: A History of Worcester State Hospital in Massachusetts 1830-1920 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1966). Some of the material in this book has been used in the present study with the kind permission of the Press.