The curability of insanity and the individualized treatment of the insane / by John S. Butler.
- John Simpkins Butler
- Date:
- 1887
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The curability of insanity and the individualized treatment of the insane / by John S. Butler. 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.
18/76 page 8
![superintendent of the newly erected Lunatic Hospital, of the city of Boston. Those three years' superintendency of the Lunatic Hospital gave me the desired opportunity of applying to my own cases of insanity those principles of treatment which I had seen applied with such eminent success in Dr. Woodward's wards, a success which I have never seen surpassed, if equalled ; a fascinating illustra- tion to me, of the merciful advances in these later days from the ignorance and cruel barbarism in the mad houses of ye olden times, when, in the language of an old Scotch writer : The better sort of ye mad people were given to the care of the chirurgeon, the baser sort, to the taming of the scourge ! See Appendix (i). The ]Vo7'th American J^eview, for January, 1843, has an article on Insanity in Massachusetts. The writer says : We select for description the Boston Lunatic Hospital in 1842. Its patients are wholly of the pauper class. Its in- mates are of the worst and most hopeless class of cases. They are the raving madman and the gibbering idiot, whom, in the language of the inspectors of prisons, hos- pitals, etc., for Suffolk County, we had formerly seen tearing their clothes amid cold, lacerating their bodies, contracting most filthy habits, without self-control, unable to restrain the worst feelings, endeavoring to injure those who approached them, giving vent to their irritation in the most passionate, profane, and filthy language, fearing and feared, hating and almost hated. Now they are all neatly clad by day and comfortably lodged in separate rooms by night. They walk quietly with self-respect along their spacious and airy halls, or sit in listening groups around the daily paper, or they dig in the garden, or handle](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21044880_0018.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
