Forty-seventh annual report of the managers of the State Lunatic Asylum at Utica, for the year ending Sept. 30, 1889 : transmitted to the legislature March, 1890 / New York State Lunatic Asylum.
- New York (State). State Lunatic Asylum
- Date:
- 1890
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Forty-seventh annual report of the managers of the State Lunatic Asylum at Utica, for the year ending Sept. 30, 1889 : transmitted to the legislature March, 1890 / New York State Lunatic Asylum. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![day of the man’s discharge), the assurance of peace and happiness in his new sphere. Neiv legislation.— It is much to be regretted that the shaping of our insanity laws is left largely to those who are without practical experience with the insane, and that bills sometimes become laws before there has been a single voice raised for or against them by men qualified by practical training to urge or stay the vote of the Legislature. The year just closed has been noteworthy, as having given buth to a great many lunacy bills of hasty and inconsiderate preparation. But practical alienists are now con¬ fident in the hope that hereafter the new State Commission in Lunacy will be permitted to exercise a wholesome influence on legislation by acting as an advisory body in all matters pertaining to the welfare of the insane in this State. The Gallup bill of last session only escaped enactment by the veto of the Governor. This measure, framed doubtless by well- meaning persons and containing some excellent provisions, was a marvel of red tape, actually calling for so many steps before a patient could gain access to a hospital, that no fewer than thirteen papers might be necessary to complete the procedure. As Dr. Frederick Peterson, of New York, points out: “It is clearly to be seen that the framers of this law had in mind only the protection of a few cases such as have been (gene¬ rally unwisely) freed from asylums on writs of habeas corpus, and the prevention, possibly, of the incarceration of sane persons in asylums, but it is a narrow view to have these only in mind. To protect one doubtful insane person who is more than likely a troublesome paranoiac, 999 are made to suffer.” Some may adduce such a case as that of Nelly Bly to show how easily sane persons may be committed as insane if they will but act and speak falsehood to the examining medical officers. Shall we assume that would-be patients are all feigners when they come “scrabbling on the doors of our gate and letting their spittle fall down upon their beards,” and see in every applicant for relief a possible newspaper reporter in disguise ? If any one of us shall show himself apparently controlled by false hearing or false sight, or false perceptions of any kind, and have not the motive of crime com¬ mitted to call in question the genuineness of the symptoms, who shall gainsay him ? To the alienist physician it is unfortunately not vouchsafed, as to the all-seeing layman, to detect the “ wild look in [Senate, No. 13. ] 7](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b30317691_0049.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
