The power of individuals to prevent melancholy in themselves : a lecture delivered at the Literary and Scientific Institution, Pimlico, May 14th, 1860 / by C.J.B. Aldis ; Charles Moody in the chair.

  • Charles James Berridge Aldis
Date:
1860
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The power of individuals to prevent melancholy in themselves : a lecture delivered at the Literary and Scientific Institution, Pimlico, May 14th, 1860 / by C.J.B. Aldis ; Charles Moody in the chair. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    patient (a clergyman) was kicked down stairs by a keeper, whilst his wife was insulted by the keepers with indecent language, in order to prevent her from visiting him. Another male patient disappeared, and was never afterwards heard of. Four patients were supposed to be burnt to death. The asylum having been found to be on fire, a few days after, a general investigation was directed ; and there were several other patients of whom no account could be given. Many more examples of extreme barbarity could be cited, but I will be content with calling your attention to one more instance, which was stated in evidence before a Parliamentary Committee, in 1827, and related to the Bethnal Green Asylum. The patients were chained down in their cribs, wet and dirty, at four o’clock on Saturday, and were never liberated till nine or ten o’clock on Monday morning, wallowing in their filth and in the utmost misery, in crowded ill-ventilated places. The object of this cruelty was to give some of the keepers (of wFom there was an in- sufficient number) a holiday on Sundays. The patients lay in these cribs naked, upon straw, with nothing but a blanket to cover them, although the window was merely an aperture without glass ; that these were dirty patients, in- sensible to the call of nature, yet that none of them were washed, and a few only of them were wiped during this period; and that on the Monday morning, even in No- vember (and as one witness stated, in frosty weather), they were rubbed down with a mop, dipped in cold water, like so many animals. It was further stated, that there was no medical treatment for insanity, that there was no employ- ment or classification. The medical treatment was formerly very barbarous. At Bedlam, the patients used to be bled in the Spring and Autumn—perhaps 150 at a time—early in the morning, before the medical attendants had arrived. Cold affusion i
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