A letter to the governors of Bethlem Hospital containing an account of their management of that institution for the last twenty years ... with a ... narrative of the confinement of James Norris ... Part 1. / by John Haslam.

Date:
1818
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A letter to the governors of Bethlem Hospital containing an account of their management of that institution for the last twenty years ... with a ... narrative of the confinement of James Norris ... Part 1. / by John Haslam. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    tlic next meeting of tlie committee. In the interim, my exertions to collect all useful intelligence were unremitting, and the persons I consulted generally 'concurred in the impracticability of effecting this ob- ject by steam, so as to procure a healthy atmosphere. Ou inquiring the probable time when the committee would re-asserable, I learned, with some regret, that the meeting had already taken place, and that the con- tract to warm the hospital by steam had been signed. The result, as you well know, of this hasty and incon- siderate procedure has been a total failure of the contrivance, and the unnecessary lavishment of more than a thousand pounds. Notwithstanding you have condescended to de- ])rive me of an office, which I held for more than twenty years with unimpeached credit, and with the undcviating sanction of your approbation, by a ma- noeuvre as unprecedented as it was oblique ; it is not within the sphere of your power to bereave me of the experience I have assiduously and painfully accumu- lated on tlie subject of insanity, and the various morbid affections of the human mind. For several years I daily passed more than six hours within the walls of your hospital, and have preserved an accurate history of many thousand cases,—constituting a mass of knowledge which will enable me to administer relief to suffering humanity. After the proofs I have adduced of the rectitude of my own conduct, and of the fidelity witJi which
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