Tenth annual report of the Suffolk Lunatic Asylum : December, 1847.

  • Suffolk Lunatic Asylum
Date:
[1848?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Tenth annual report of the Suffolk Lunatic Asylum : December, 1847. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    into other hands, went of his own accord into the patients* galleries, for quietude and repose, where he remains. He is now occasionally violent and dis¬ turbed ; talks incoherently and loudly; and breaks up his discourses, which are not without sense, into frag¬ ments of folly. We hope however he may yet get well again. In order to carry out the steady pursuit of any course to a successful issue, there are lessons which can only be learned in the Iiisane school; and even there, it is some¬ times difficult to tutor one’s own mind to the convic¬ tion, that the doings of turbulent destructiveness are beyond individual control; and that that class of pa¬ tients who come under the distinction of “ Morally In¬ sane” are quite irresponsible for their deeds. The moment however responsibility is admitted, penal treatment is the necessary sequence; which never should arise in the moral management of the Insane, or enter into the discipline of a Lunatic Asylum. There are cases however, which are occasionally met with, that call for more than ordinary forbearance, and, in the zeal for representative quietude, it is hardly honest not to notice them. We have an anx¬ ious case in the house at present, of a female whose discourse is always on the “outrage,” (to use her own words) to which her “fine feelings are subjected by association with Lunatics,” while her daily and night¬ ly displays are themselves coarse and outrageous. The number of windows this woman has broken, and the absnkets she has torn, would make up a very seriousi
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