Mental hospitals and the public : the need for closer co-operation / by Lt.-Colonel J.R. Lord, C.B.E., M.D., F.R.C.P. Edin.

  • Lord, J. R. (John Robert), 1874-1931
Date:
1927
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Mental hospitals and the public : the need for closer co-operation / by Lt.-Colonel J.R. Lord, C.B.E., M.D., F.R.C.P. Edin. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    In the year 1750 there were in existence in London the following volunf general hospitals : St. Bartholomew’s, 1123 (refounded 1547); St. Thomas’s, 1200 (refoun 1553); Westminster, 1719; Guy’s, 1721 ; St. George’s, 1733; London, 17 Middlesex, 1745 ; together with the British Lying-In, 1749; the City of Lon Maternity Hospital, 1750; Queen Charlotte’s, 1752; the General Lying-In oper its doors three years later. In the English provinces there were voluntary general hospitals at Bath (17 Bristol (1735), Exeter (1741), Liverpool (1745), Northampton (1743), Shrewsb (1747), Winchester (1736), Worcester (1746), York (1740). During the following century voluntary general hospitals sprang up mushrooms, also many special hospitals; and both, especially the latter, h continued to multiply with the increasing necessities of a growing population. People of all classes have continued to pour out their money and treasures provide for the care and treatment of the poor suffering from physical diseases disorders. Now let us look at the case of the sick in mind. I am not at the moment concer with those well blessed with this world’s goods and chattels. Their interests w mentally afflicted were always protected by the State, though, like the insane p< they suffered in the private mental institutions—now called licensed houses—f] the barbarous practices then thought to be right in the medical treatment of insane. One reads of the old Metropolitan Commissioners in Lunacy discussing comparative efficiency of chains and handcuffs, iron girdles, collars and strait-wa coats. They once reported that handcuffs and chains were preferable to str waistcoats as less heating. From voluntary sources beds existed at Beth (Moorfields) (1377), Guy’s Hospital (1744 to 1859), Bethel House, Norwich (17 and a few at some of the provincial voluntary general hospitals and infirmai Before the end of the century there came into existence St. Luke’s Hospital (17i Bootham Park (1777), Liverpool Asylum (1792), and the Betreat (1792). Fi 1800 onwards to this day there has been founded only nine other registe hospitals for the insane—a total accommodation of less than 2500 beds from i source, and the beds in the voluntary general hospitals and infirmaries bees things of the past until recently.* * In Scotland, public and private response was much greater, and the Royal or Charti Asylums, seven in number and one without a Charter, date from 1781 onwards until the Scot Lunacy Act of 1857 led to district pauper lunatic asylums being established. The Royal Hosj at Morningside opened in 1813, the result of nearly 40 years’ agitation by Dr. Andrew Duncan, Scottish “ Tuke,”
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