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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sihle . . &c.' In tlie following Annual Eeport (1838), [written and signed by E. P. Chaeleswokth, vide Minute Book, March 19, 1838], I read, ^ The bold conception of pushing the mitigation of restraint to the extent of actually and formally abolishing the practice, mentioned in the last Report as due to Mr Hill, the House-Surgeon, seems to be justified, &c.' Nothing could be plainer and clearer, and more exclusive of anybody else being the original owner of the hold conception mentioned, and in my Dutch paper nobody but Mr Hill was mentioned as the originator of the Non-Restraint System. After a relation of the intro- duction of this system in the Lincoln Asylum, I gave in the same way, i. e. by extracts from the Hanwell Reports, the history of it in Hanwell; and in my critical remarks on both Asylums at the end of my paper I could not help giving the preference, as to the different methods in which the Non-Restraint System was carried out in Lincoln and Hanwell, to the principles and practice pursued by Dr Conolly, as I could not either agree with the simultaneous abolition of all seclusion of the insane for a few hours in a single room, or with the rejecting of a proper out-door classification, &c., which the Board of Managers of the Lincoln Asylum thought better to dispense with altogether. I was happy to find, in the ' Further Report of the Com- missioners in Lunacy of 1847,' that I was not the only one who thought that the Board of Managers of the Lincoln Asylum carried things too far, and the uncourteous answer of the Grovernors of the Lincoln Lunatic Asylum to the Visiting Commissioners in Lunacy, contained in Appendix (H) of the 'Further Report, pages 363—378,' seemed to justify my fear that there was some false ambition among the Governors of the Lincoln Lunatic Asylum of aiming at too much. If, therefore, as to the abolition of restraint, I thought the Lincoln Asylum deserved all the honour of the priority before other Asylums, yet I then did not at all think

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