The moral treatment of the insane : a lecture / by W.A.F. Browne.

Date:
1864
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The moral treatment of the insane : a lecture / by W.A.F. Browne. 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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    exercise in tlie country around every asylum, find amusement in the concert rooms and theatres of crowded cities. I liave detected them copying pictures in the Louvre. Groups occu])y sea-side and summer lodgings, scattered through the country. Dr.WiugjOf Northampton, transports twenty or thirty of his charges every season to Wales, and with benefit. Individuals have made tours to Ireland, the Lakes, the Exhibition, and daily from this spot four or five carriages and an om- nibus afford drives; and, twice a week during man}^ months of the year, convey larger numbers of excursionists to greater distances. These may seem holiday recreations and suited for the drones of the hive. There is a graver and more important business going on in such communities. Before the value of occupation was recognised as a mode of expending surplus and, as it were, accumulated nervous force, of diverting the mind from itself towards muscular action and external objects, and of exercising certain powers and acquirements usefully and profitably, the miseries of seclusion and solitude must have been frightfully aggravated by involuntary idleness, by the pro- hibition of every object in which the mind could feel interest, except that self-torture which no means were taken to prohibit or prevent. The revulsion of opinion has been so great, that work, even physical toil, in the open air, is elevated by many into a panacea; and it is amusing to notice the English commissioners suggesting another weekly half-holiday for the industrious of Colney Hatch. But Guis- lain was right; there are many case? in which rest is a remedy, &c.; in which muscular action or the volitions upon which muscular action depends, serve as a stimulus to the nervous system, aggravate excite- ment and disturb the whole economy. It is said that to the cupidity of a Scotch farmer is due the discovery that mania may be calmed and cured by labour, and that the augmented energies of a paroxysm may be utilised in digging ditches, or ploughing the stubborn glebe. You heard at last lecture of the young lady who, Hke the wife of Lord Derby's navvy, irrationally and vehemently pulled hair and then scrubbed herself into complacency and common sense. _ The farmer cultivated his farm and gathered his crops by the aid of these slaves or patients. While a preference is given to gardening and agriculture, all household services, all trades, handicrafts, are per- formed by patients, either as a means of restoration, or amelioralion ; for it should be clearly understood that although the main object of all moral as well as of all medical treatment is to restore reason, the most frequent and, perhaps, considering the number of chronic cases, the most important object, is to repair, reconsolidate, and raise the incurable as high in the scale of intelligence as possible. Certain asylums have acquired a reputation for their weavers, ribbon, and lace makers; others for intrepidity in entrusting madmen with shoe- makei-'s bowie knives, with scythes, axes, and other lethal weapons;
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