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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    answer is not difficult to find, though it is not so easily given. Yet so lane is it to my subject that some attempt must be made, t is to be noted that the origin of both kinds of hospitals is the same. They children of the same parent, but have grown up so differently that they are now tically strangers to each other. Co understand how this comes about involves some historical research. Now sgard to the care and treatment of those sick in mind, in the Greco-Roman ss following the teaching of Hippocrates, who lived about 460 b.c., insanity was gnized as a disease or disorder to be treated by the science and art of medicine he hands of the physician. The doctor succeeded the priest and magician in care of the insane. Mechanical restraint was first abolished about 150 a.d., ultimately the mental institutions, such as existed at that period, rivalled those l most up-to-date of the present mental hospitals. Solon [630-558 b.c.], one of seven wise men of Greece, long before this, made vise lunacy laws and defined ie forms of mental disorder which called for detention. Ml this enlightenment was swept away during the Dark Ages, and became hang of the past for centuries. Philosophy was replaced by scholasticism, nee became alchemy, astrology, theosophy, necromancy and charlatanry, insane were again, as they were in the days prior to Greek culture, regarded ifflicted by God and possessed by devils, though not a few were treated as nely inspired and met with great consideration—even worship and reverence— ending upon the form their mental disorder took. Some were cared for in lastic institutions, but otherwise they became outcasts and less thought of than s. Thousands upon thousands of insane were cruelly executed on conviction witchcraft. This lasted for 1300 years or so, and matters did not improve very h with the Renaissance until about the end of the eighteenth century. The care of the sick, from very early times, has been closely associated, even itified, with religious organizations and communities and their houses. In ancient T?t, Assyria and Greece, also in Italy under the Romans, the sick were brought the temples, which were largely supported by the gifts and fees received from ients in return for treatment. The oldest records of such treatment date from ut 3,500 b.c. In ancient Greece the sanctuaries founded by the priests of culapius, the God of Healing, were commonly resorted to by the sick and injured, the Greek physicians, especially those bred at the famous medical school at , were above superstitious practices and, like the present-day general medical ctitioners, probably treated most of the patients who consulted them at their i homes.
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