Volume 1

Familiar views of lunacy and lunatic life: with hints on the personal care and ... management of those who are afflicted with temporary or permanent derangement / By the late medical superintendent of an asylum for the insane. [i.e. John Conolly?].

Date:
1850
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Familiar views of lunacy and lunatic life: with hints on the personal care and ... management of those who are afflicted with temporary or permanent derangement / By the late medical superintendent of an asylum for the insane. [i.e. John Conolly?]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL IN 1815. 14] ‘made joyful summer by that sun of York!’ which beamed first from the Quaker’s Retreat, hard by the capital of the great northern shire; and while the eyes of the rest of the nation were bent eagerly upon the progress of the war abroad, the lunatic part of the population was left to fight its own battles at home unthought of and unseen, save by the casual eye of some amateur philanthropist. In the year 1815, however, a great upstir was made about the condition of the Hospital of Bethlehem, which was found to be in a sadly neglected state. One patient had been confined for twelve years in such an extraordinary manner, with a complication of locks, bars, bolts, rivets, and chains, that a great outcry was made about his case by the public, who are sadly apt to let misery pass on its course unnoticed, unless it arrests their attention by exhibiting some traits of the marvellous or picturesque. The result of the investigation which took place on this occasion was, that public attention was drawn more than ever towards the treatment of the insane. County asylums for paupers began to come more quickly into fashion, where new methods of treatment were embraced by those whom habit had not confirmed into a belief in the superior efficacy of the old ones. Chains were removed, and milder restraints substituted ; and much more care given to the warming, clothing, and diet of the patients. Then came the introduction of regular and systematic employment, particularly in farming and gardening operations, in the furtherance of which plan, the late Sir William Ellis, physician to the asylum at Wake- field, and afterwards to that of Hanwell, eminently