Seventeenth annual report of the directors and physician of James Murray's Royal Asylum for Lunatics. June 1844.

  • James Murray's Royal Asylum for Lunatics
Date:
1844
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Seventeenth annual report of the directors and physician of James Murray's Royal Asylum for Lunatics. June 1844. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    good labourer, of a sane mind, would easily perform as muck work as three insane persons, accustomed to work, could do. Besides the occupations and amusements referred to, it has been the practice in this Asylum for several years, not unfre- quently, to allow such of the patients of both sexes, whose cases admit of it, to meet together for some hours in the evening to listen to the piano, or the violin, and likewise to engage in dancing. The patients look forward to such occasions with great delight, and when from any misbehaviour they arc threatened with ex¬ clusion from such happy meetings, it often operates beneficially in making them improve their conduct. A stranger unacquainted with the character of those present on these occasions, would certainly never dream that those whom he saw were other than sane men and women, and would marvel when he was informed that those before him were the inmates of a Lunatic Asylum. The harmless pleasantries which pass on these occasions would often do credit to wiser heads, and one would almost be tempted to think that, for the moment, they had been emancipated from the thraldom of their sore malady. These amusements are considered to exercise a beneficial effect on a certain class of patients, and of course discrimination is used in selecting those who are allowed to take a part in them. After glancing at the numerous contrivances which the inge¬ nuity and humanity of Europeans have made for the benefit of the insane, and which are calculated, in such a great degree, to alleviate the distress both of the unhappy persons themselves, as well as of their relatives, it may not be uninstructive, by way of contrast, to look for a moment to the description given by a modern traveller* of a mad-house in Cairo, the modern capital of Egypt. * Egypt and Mohammed Ali, hy James Augustus St, John,—vol 2, pp. 302-10. ] 834.