An act (8 & 9 Vict. c. 100) for the regulation of the care and treatment of lunatics. With explanatory notes ['A history of the legislation on ... lunacy'], etc., and comments / Edited by Forbes Winslow, M.D.

  • Winslow, Forbes, 1810-1874.
Date:
1845
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An act (8 & 9 Vict. c. 100) for the regulation of the care and treatment of lunatics. With explanatory notes ['A history of the legislation on ... lunacy'], etc., and comments / Edited by Forbes Winslow, M.D. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    A HISTORY OF THE LEGISLATION ON THE SUBJECT OF LUNACY. It is not my purpose to consider at any length this subject. Were I disposed to do so, I should find but little difficulty in awakening the kindly sympathies of the humane, or in appalling the most callous hearts, by entering into a detail of the barbarous treatment to which all those unhappily afflicted with a Joss of reason were in former times subjected. The public mind has been made sufficiently conversant with facts like these. The insane are no longer treated like wild beasts; the lunatic asylum no longer resembles the Spanish Inquisition, or the hold of a slave-ship; the poor, wretched inmates of these establishments are not now exposed to the painful infliction of the whip, nor are they chained like felons to the floor of some dreary, pestilential dungeon, and exhibited to the gaze of those anxious to gratify a morbid curiosity. Thanks and immortal honour be to those who laid bare these great enormities ! The condition of these unhappy sufferers had, for some period antecedent to the introduction of #3 B :