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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    otherwise pure and good. And they to be thrown into the society of felons, of thieves and murderers! It is enough to crush the heart to tliink of it. I see that this Asylum, by the language of its charter,* ])rovides only for the poor and destitute inebriate, and in that I think its idea too limited. All inebriates are poor and destitute, and their friends helpless and alike in despair, with- out the means of confining them in an appropriate and remedial institution. As well might we make a distinction in our hospitals for the small-pox. Let the rich be made to pay whatever you please for the use of this institution, but provide for their use of it by the original charter. THERE IS N(3T A RICH PARENT IN NEW YORK THAT CAN NOT BETTER AFFORD TO DROP HIS CARRIAGE THAN FAIL TO CONTRIBUTE TO THE ENDOWMENT OF AN ASYLUM IN WHICH HIS OWN CHILDREN MAY FIND THEIR RUIN AVERTED. Of course the poor and destitute deserve our first consideration; but drunkenness is not con- fined to class, nor are its horrible evils worse in one than in another station. If we turn from the relief to human misery which our Asylum considered as the inebriate’s hospital, would afford, to the probable cure of the disease which ]iathological treatment would affect, we hud new and still greatei* reasons for the establishjuent of this Asylum. Drunkenness is a disease, even when it is a moral weakness and a vice. It so disorders the normal condition of the stomach and the brain, that human beings in its power are no longer open to the ordinary motives which affect the will and the conscience. The sincerest desire and effort to avoid and conquer the tenqffation to drink is, in many cases, as vain as by a mora l effort to prevent the retui-n of an ague fit. AVhole families are by coustitutional inherit- ance lialde to its tyranny; and some individuals areas much and as innocentlyits victims as though they fell bythecholera orthe plague. Now this frightful disease isat leastas ho])eful as insanity if taken in time. A large percentage of those who go to asylnms in time recover from insanity; and medical * Tlie ])rojectors of thiH Asylum designed it for all classes—the rich as well as the i)Oor.