Considerations on the moral management of insane persons.

  • John Haslam
Date:
1817
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Considerations on the moral management of insane persons. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    desirable that he should he shaved, made clean, bathed, or submit to various medical t operations by coercion. Whatever restraint or coercion may be employed, should be re¬ garded as used exclusively for the benelit of the patient: and if it should ever be resorted to, without keeping strongly in view this sole object, it is misapplied, converted into an engine of tyranny, and becomes a stigma of disgrace on the medical profession. Coercion should never be considered, by the superintendent, or keeper, as a punish¬ ment, but as a mean of cure. By the patient it will always be viewed as a punishment, and as an unjust usurpation of authority ; because, being of deranged intellect, and not con¬ scious of his disorder, he conceives all res¬ traint on his actions to be an illegal assump¬ tion of power on the part of those who restrain him. The usual contrivance by which a E