The history of the first inebriate asylum in the world / by its founder [Jonathan Edward Turner]. An account of his indictment, also a sketch of the Woman's national hospital, by its founder.

  • Turner, J. Edward, 1822-1889.
Date:
1888
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The history of the first inebriate asylum in the world / by its founder [Jonathan Edward Turner]. An account of his indictment, also a sketch of the Woman's national hospital, by its founder. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    kiiul of a man Mr. Vincent Collyer was, and wliat motives could have induced him to op])Ose, hy a violent s}>eech before the Legislature of Connecticut, the grant- ing of a charter of one of the most important hos])itals of the day. Dr. Hamilton’s oi)inion was that Mr. Collyer’s opposition to the charter of tlie IIos])ital was ])i-ompted l)y Dr. Willard Parker, and that Collyer was a character that wore the face of a woman with the body of a hyena.” As the charter of the Woman’s Hospital has been granted and its location secured, it Avill be an easy work to found and build it, as no institution has a greater necessit} underlying it. I have six female patients who are all victims of o])ium or alcoholism—two of them will die within a month if they are not controlled in a hospital—the other four may live a year. These patients belong to highly respected families, and all of them have been developed out of the strain and drain of an overtaxed body in the drndgery of life, or in the excitements and gaieties of the fashionable Avorld ; such cases of physical and mental wrecks not only suffering themselves, but the families suffering even more than the victim. I am acquainted with a lady, daughter of an ex-judge, who Avas one of the most charming and thoroughly educated ladies in the country. Her mother was an inebriate,' and she developed into a hereditaiy drunkard of the most loathsome and degraded character. At an early age she married a New York banker, and lived on Fifth Avenue in all the eleo-ancies and luxuries of the age. Yet she would wander, in her delirium, in the streets of the metropolis, and was often arrested by the police in lier night costume. The husband of this victim often said to me that it would be