Report of the Commissioners of Lunacy, to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts : January, 1875.

  • Massachusetts. Commission on Lunacy.
Date:
1875
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report of the Commissioners of Lunacy, to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts : January, 1875. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    are required anywhere, it is surely iu the medical treatment of insane persons. The highest skill, the best experience, and the greatest wisdom to be found in the profession should by all means here be brought into requisition. Connected with this topic, the inquiry arises, Can a super- intendent, with one or two assistants, treat properly four or five hundred sick people? In private practice, a physician could not begin to do justice to a quarter part of this number. This constitutes a serious objection to large hospitals. In all these institutions, it is found that there must be one super- intending mind ; there must be in every department personal responsibility resting upon some one individual. If the superintendent is to act as steward,—is to have charge of all the repairs, improvements and the finauces of the institution, —is to have his mind charged with a multitude of other luties too numerous to mention, how can he properly examine, prescribe for, and carefully watch, from day to day, very many patients? It is true, he may have good assistants, and there may be large numbers in our lunatic hospitals who really need no medical treatment; yet, with the cares, labors and responsibilities put upon him, can he do justice to all such patients as are very sick, or in the first stages of the disease? If there must be lack of attention or neglect of duty anywhere, it certainly should not be iu the medical care of the insane. Another agency in the ti-eatment of the insane, in some respects more important than the use of drugs, certainly so to large numbers of them, is that of sanitary influences. Once, the value and efficiency of these agencies were imper- fectly understood; yet nowhere are they so important as in the case of the insane, where great numbers, diseased both h] body and mind, are brought into close contact. Good air, pure water, cleanliness and proper exercise are here indis- pensible. Within a few years great improvements in these respects have been made in all our hospitals, but there is room for still more. Most serious defects, under these heads, might be pointed out in each of our institutions, in some more than others; but we cannot at the present time enter into detail. One single point should be mentioned. We found the lower halls at the Worcester Hospital, several in
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