Fifteenth annual report of the Suffolk Lunatic Asylum : December, 1852.

  • Suffolk Lunatic Asylum
Date:
1853
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Fifteenth annual report of the Suffolk Lunatic Asylum : December, 1852. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    and tenacity which others might imitate with advantage. Glazing and painting afford constant work in such a house as this, and many of our patients do it well; they engage in it cheerfully, and come and report their own progress, and al¬ most always to our mutual satisfaction. Generally speaking we have found that where the greater latitude is given, the less is the risk incurred. From the late improvements effected by the removal of bricks from closed up windows in the parts devoted to the more refractory patients, we have certainly had no increase in the breakage of glass. It is most readily acknowledged, that very much of our usual quietude and comfort, is to be traced to that mutual good feeling which exists between the patients and their attendants. We know nothing whatever of the old illustra¬ tions, and morbid accounts, about the stern and intimidating glance of the latter, or the furious glare and vindictiveness of the former. A friendly association of feeling is encouraged and kept up; and this makes it so desirable, if possible, to avoid any change of attendants. Every one, sane or insane, can appreciate the comfort of having well-known persons round the sick man’s bed, and the joy which in very great measure may be communicated even in bodily pain; and there is a degree of cheerfulness produced in mental depression and sor¬ row, by the recognition of a friendly face, and the pressure of a friendly hand. Our patients are perhaps as little insensible to these delicate feelings as others, and their encouragement goes a vast way in their onward progress towards recovery. Patients who from repeated attacks come to be re-admitted, almost invariably request to be permitted to occupy their former place, and to have the assistance of their former attend¬ ants. Upon the female side, where the numbers are very much beyond our actual capabilities of comfortable accommo¬ dation, this has been very much felt and appreciated; it has led us to meet, with comparative satisfaction, difficulties which otherwise would have been very perplexing to overcome. There are now eighteen females more than there is comfort¬ able provision for.
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