A visit to thirteen asylums for the insane in Europe : to which are added a brief notice of similar institutions in transatlantic countries and in the United States, and an essay on the causes, duration, termination and moral treatment of insanity, with copious statistics / by Pliny Earle.

  • Pliny Earle
Date:
1841
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A visit to thirteen asylums for the insane in Europe : to which are added a brief notice of similar institutions in transatlantic countries and in the United States, and an essay on the causes, duration, termination and moral treatment of insanity, with copious statistics / by Pliny Earle. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    shake hands with her, when she has washed her hands; a summons to assist in carrying dinner; a permission to help to beautify the garden, are enough. Further on, is another in a quieter state of content, always calling to mind the strawber- ries and cream Mrs. Ellis set before the inmates on the lawn last year, and persuading herself that the strawberries could not grow, nor the garden get on, without her, and fiddle-fad- dling in the sunshine to her own satisfaction, and that of her guardians. This woman had been in a strait waistcoat for ten years before she went to Ilanwell. In a shed in the gar- den, sit three or four patients cutting potatoes for seed, singing and amusing each other; while Thomas, a mild, contented looking patient, passes by with Mrs. Ellis's clogs, which he stoops to tie on with all possible politeness; finding it much pleasanter, as Dr. Ellis says, 'to wait on a lady than be chained in a cell.' In the bakehouse, meanwhile, are a company of patients kneading their dough; and in the wash-house and laundry many more equally busy, who would be tearing their clothes to pieces if there was not the mangle to be turned, and a prodigious array of linen in the drying closet to be ironed. A storv higher are coteries of straw-plaitcrs, and basket-makers, and knitters among the women, and saddlers, shoemakers and tailors among the men.* A chapel is connected with the institution, where a portion of the patients assemble at a weekly service, and at morning and evening prayers. Those patients who leave the Asylum destitute of pecuniary means are, by a beneficent provision of the government of the institution, so far assisted as to enable them to supply their wants, until they can obtain a situation wherein to gain a subsistence. Sir W. C. Ellis, who, in 1S37, and for several years pre- viously, had fulfilled the duties of superintendent of this Asylum, has published a work upon insanity, from which the following anecdote is extracted. It proves that he is gifted with a presence of mind, and a sagacity adapted to any emergency, and worthy of the man who has received the dis- * Miscellanies, by Harriet Martineau. Boston edition. Vol. i. p. 231, 232.
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