Our insane neighbor : his rights and ours.

W. W. Godding

Date:: [1844?]

Credit: Our insane neighbor : his rights and ours. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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OUR INSANE NEIGHBOR; HIS RIGHTS AND OURS. By W. W. GODDING, M.D., Author of Two Hard Cases. AN INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. I AM aware that I shall be met at the outset of this discussion by the suggestion that the rights of the insane have already been practically settled, and the afflicted man taken to the asylum. Certainly we are a Christian people, and we feel a commendable pride in the imposing structures which the State has provided for the care of these unfortunates. Our hospitals for the insane stand as exponents—examples, too, of the best class—of the good that can be accomplished by that organized charity wherein we are never weary of doing good by proxy, without any individual discomfort to oifrselves. One looking on these vast piles of masonry, and remembering their benevolent design, might readily fancy that here the evangel of good will to men, that fell once on suffering humanity, soft as the dew from heaven, had, in later ages, becoming systematized, hard- ened into stone. Are there no prisons? demands Scrooge, in the Christmas story, when called upon to show a little indi- vidual benevolence; And the union workhouses, are they still in operation ? The question, Who is my neighbor ? is a very old one, and, like that still earlier query, Am I my brother's keeper? is not usually asked for information, but put forward as a foil by those who want nothing whatever to do with what is to them a very disagreeable subject. In this aesthetic age the management of unpleasant things is made as

Our insane neighbor : his rights and ours.

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