Report of the Lunatic Department of the Baltimore Alms-House : presented to the Board of Trustees, December, 1840 : to which is added an appendix, containing an appeal in behalf of the insane poor of Maryland / by Alex. C. Robinson.
- Robinson, A. C. (Alexander C.)
- Date:
- 1841
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Report of the Lunatic Department of the Baltimore Alms-House : presented to the Board of Trustees, December, 1840 : to which is added an appendix, containing an appeal in behalf of the insane poor of Maryland / by Alex. C. Robinson. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)
21/24
![APPENDIX [The following Appendix was attached to a Report on Delirium Tremens, lately prepared by Dr. Robinson, and published in the fourth number of the Baltimore Medical and Surgical Journal. It is inserted here, because it has direct reference to the subject-matter of the preceding- Report.] The gentlemen of the Board of Trustees of the Baltimore Aims-House, anxious to ameliorate the condition of the lunatic inmates, and convinced of the impracticability of instituting such a moral and physical treatment as is best calculated to restore them to health, unless in an asylum exclusively devoted to the Insane, have already called the attention of the City and Coun- ty authorities to the necessity of some more appropriate disposition of them, and have directed a few additional apartments to be prepared for their present accommodation. We are pained to acknowledge the inevitable necessity we have sometimes experienced from the crowded condition of the cells and the large number of lunatics, of treating our Delirium Tremens patients in the immediate vicinity of, if not in the same apartment with, Insane patients. Seventy-six lunatics aVe now confined in this Aims-House alone :—twenty- nine white males ; twenty-eight white females ; seven black males ; twelve black females, besides twelve idiats. A portion of these are foreigners; some are individuals from other states, and some from other counties of this state, who find their way, or are sent to Baltimore totally unprovided for, and conse- quently have no other asylum but the Aims-House. The whole number in the State of Maryland, including those confined at private houses, and such as continue immured in the county poor houses and jails, will soon be reported by the Marshal. If the proportion to the entire population approximate that in other states, the new census will show a large class of indigent beings, afflicted with a malady now known to be curable in the proportion of ninety per cent, of recent cases, under an early and judi- ciously directed physical and moral treatment. Yet the sufferers, whose only crime is their poverty and disease, are treated as if unworthy of sympathy; forgotten in their prison-houses, where they are allowed little beside the poor privilege to breathe ; chained like convicts or associated with vagrants, as was formerly the case in all parts of Europe, as well as in every portion ot the United States, when, under the errors of a false philosophy and the iorce ol prejudice, insanity was viewed as an infliction, the attempted removal of which was deemed idle if not presumptuous. . When will Maryland arouse to the necessity of following the benevolent example of most of her sister states, in providing some suitable asylum lor her Insane Poor,-where they may enjoy those comforts and conveniences those occupations and amusements, which are acknowledged to be indispensable to alleviate, if not to cure? In such an asylum how many would be restored to « mental existence and usefulness, whose hallucinations are now aggravated,— the disordered functions of their brains goaded to excess, resulting in organic change and permanent fatuity, by being uncomfortably kept in crowded apart- ments, subjected, perhaps, to some form of personal restraint to protect them from each other ; deprived of the benefits of exercise, amusement and occupa- tion-a condition as well calculated to induce insanity in a healthy individual. as to render it perpetual when once manifested. . . Science and philosophy have triumphantly proved the curability of insanity if attended to early ; and the people of Maryland cannot cont.nue deal to the](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21150862_0021.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
