On the construction and management of hospitals for the insane; with a particular notice of the institution at Siegburg / By Dr.Maximilian Jacobi. Translated by John Kitching. With introductory observations, &c., by Samuel Tuke.

  • Carl Wigand Maximilian Jacobi
Date:
1841
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the construction and management of hospitals for the insane; with a particular notice of the institution at Siegburg / By Dr.Maximilian Jacobi. Translated by John Kitching. With introductory observations, &c., by Samuel Tuke. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    recovery, by a method of treatment altogether dissimilar, but not less injudicious. For the sake of preserving him tran- quil, every wild and fickle whim suggested by his disordered intellect, is indulged and encouraged. He not only imperi- ously exercises all the authority which he possessed whilst in his right mind, but now, with unbounded and violent impetuosity, seeks to make every one yield with abject sub- mission to the impulses of his diseased brain. Hence, all the most experienced and cautious physicians are unanimous in the opinion that such patients are most rarely, and with the greatest difficulty, restored in their own houses, and in the midst of their own families ; and that their isolation and removal from all their accustomed habits and connexions, form nearly always the first and indispensable condition of their recovery.* But there is also another important fact, which seriously opposes the successful treatment of the imsane in private dwellings, and it is this: by far the greater number of phy- sicians who are called in, betray so much uncertainty and. embarrassment in their whole proceedings, owing to cases of this kind so seldom occurring in their practice, that a favourable issue is rendered next to impossible. Even such as commence their operations with greater decision, have but too often given occasion to remark, that when a certain series of remedies has been tried in vain, they have, after a short interval of despair as to what they should next attempt, consigned the patient to immoderate restraint, and sought a decent way of avoiding any further connexion with him. And this may be a case in which a plan of cure, founded * ] cannot avoid observing that this sound general rule has its exceptions ; and it must, I think, have occurred to those connected with asylums, to have seen affecting instances of a too precipitate removal from home; nor is it always _ sufficiently considered, whether the place chosen to which to remove the patient, really supplies what is requisite for the right treatment of the case; and it therefore not seldom happens, that the friends of patients exchange the ills they know, for those they know not of.—En.