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.
51/66 page 51
![i No. 13.] 51 it has not seemed necessary to have recourse to mechanical measures of control in the treatment of our patients. In this connection it is proper to record the lamentable fact that twenty patients were brought to the hospital in restraint by county officers and, but for the timely hints of a cabman, who has not come to the institution day after day without learning the views of the officers on this question, the number would have been larger. “ Man’s inhumanity to man ” is forcibly shown in this unnecessary degradation. No one can help lamenting the existence, even at this late day, of the spirit of the dark ages with reference to the insane, when a stalwart county officer weighing about 160 pounds, accompanied by an equally strong wife, brings to us with manacled wrists a frail girl, weighing but ninety-five pounds. How much better for the patient, how much better for the cause, to hire an extra attendant to accompany such patients to the hospital rather than bring them like felons to a prison. Another abuse is the bringing of patients to the institution on the street car in cases where their condition is such as to forbid such unnecessary exposure, for the sake of patient and fellow- passengers alike, instead of hiring a cab, which the counties are always willing to (and perhaps do) have charged in the bill. Not long ago, a deputy from a neighboring county brought an unfor¬ tunate man on the street car to the point nearest to the asylum, when his charge, resisting attempts at removal, attracted a crowd of interested spectators. On relating the occurrence at the asylum, the man opined, in tones suggestive of disappointment that his muscle had not been allowed to do full justice to itself, that but for the presence of women who cried “ Don’t hurt him, don’t hurt him ! ” he “ would have managed all right.” On another occasion during the year an officer sent to transfer patients to the asylum for the chronic insane was under the influence of strong drink. It does not happen often that unworthy persons are permitted by superintendents of the poor to bring the insane to us, but such a thing ought to be impossible in this age of alleged enlighten¬ ment. Moreover, it would be a humane rule of procedure, and nothing more than common decency, to require that women be accompanied by a person of their own sex. Sightseeing visitors. — The extent to which sight-seers should be admitted to the wards of a hospital may again claim a few words. During the year, we have admitted of this class upon](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b30317691_0051.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
