A concise history of the entire abolition of mechanical restraint in the treatment of the insane ; and of the introduction, success, and final triumph of the nonrestraint system: together with a reprint of a lecture delivered on the subject in the year 1838; and appendices, containing an account of the controversies and claims connected therewith / By Robert Gardiner Hill.

Hill, Robert Gardiner, 1811-1878.

Date:: 1857

Credit: A concise history of the entire abolition of mechanical restraint in the treatment of the insane ; and of the introduction, success, and final triumph of the nonrestraint system: together with a reprint of a lecture delivered on the subject in the year 1838; and appendices, containing an account of the controversies and claims connected therewith / By Robert Gardiner Hill. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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sense and punctilious honour, will, after due reflection, seek to accomplish such a preposterous and unjustifiable design. From the Medical Circular, February 15, 1854:— THE NON-EESTEAINT SYSTEM. TO THE EDITOE OF THE * MEDICAL CIECULAE.' , Sir, —The accompanying letter contains the impartial judgment of an unprejudiced and distinguished foreigner. Will you oblige me by giving it insertion in the next number of your valuable journal ? Your obliged servant, Egbert Gardiner Hill. Eastgate House, Lincoln, Feb. 7, 1854. {Copy:) 'Jersey, January 21, 1854. ' My dear Sir,—Although personally unknown to you, I cannot help expressing to you my great surprise and sorrow about the personal and inimical way towards you, in which it seems that the late Dr Charles worth's merits must be vindicated. ' When two years ago I wrote a rather long paper on the Non-Eestraint System for the Dutch journal, Neder- landich Lancet, I had to derive all my information from the Eeports on the State of the Lincoln Lunatic Asyhim, and in the Thirteenth Annual Eeport [written by Dr Charles- worth, and signed W. M. Pierce, vide Minute Book, April 12, 1837], page 5, I made your first acquaintance as the owner of the belief, founded on experience in the Lincoln Asylum, ' that it may be possible to conduct an Institution for the Insane without having recourse to the employment of any instruments of restraint whatever.' For in plain and express terms I read these words,—'The present House- Surgeon has expressed his own belief that it may be pos-

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