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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    and ample provision for all the indigent insane, cost what it may cost.'6 Howe’s sentiments were echoed by others, and their efforts met with considerable success. By the third quarter of the nine- teenth century virtually every state had one (and in most cases several) mental hospitals supported by public funds and caring for all patients irrespective of their ability to pay. IV In spite of reforms, the transformation of the mental hospital was more apparent than real. Within a short period of time a number of factors converged to force the mental hospital into its older and more familiar role as an undifferentiated welfare and custodial institution. As a result, psychiatry, like innumer- able other disciplines, continued to develop after 1850 within an institutional framework that placed a premium on extra- scientific and extramedical factors. At precisely the same time that the state mental hospital was coming into existence, the United States was undergoing extra- ordinarily rapid growth. The rise of industry, the quickening pace of urbanization, and, above all, the increase in population combined to alter the character of American society. An in- crease in the number of mentally ill persons coincided with these changes. Mental illness was less likely to be tolerated in highly populated areas than in rural areas, and the number of insti- tutionalized individuals rose rapidly. The success of the en- larged public mental hospitals was hampered by their multiple functions. They acted as homes for aged persons unable to care for themselves or to be cared for by their families, and as havens for unemployed and dependent individuals apparently in- capable of surviving the vicissitudes of life without some type of aid. “The feeling is quite too common,” complained the head of the New York City Lunatic Asylum in 1861, “that a lunatic asylum is a grand receptacle for all who are troublesome.”!” His feelings were echoed by other superintendents who recog- nized the ambiguous role of their institutions, but who were unable because of legal and practical difficulties to alter what at best was a distressing state of affairs.'8 16 Samuel Gridley Howe, “Insanity in Massachusetts,” North American Review, 56 (January 1843), 191. 17 New York City Lunatic Asylum, Blackwell’s Island, Annual Report (1861), 18. 18 See, for example, New Hampshire Asylum for the Insane, Annual Report, 23 (1864), 16; Longview Asylum, Annual Report, 12 (1871), 7-8; Insane Asylum of California, Annual Report, 11 (1863), 29.
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