The moral treatment of the insane : a lecture / by W.A.F. Browne.

  • William A. F. Browne
Date:
1864
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The moral treatment of the insane : a lecture / by W.A.F. Browne. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    Denis. The mechanician strongly maintained the possibility of the fact, and sought to confirm it by an application of his own case. The otlier set up a loud laugh, and replied in a tone of the keenest ridicule, ' Madman as thou art, how could St. Denis ki.ss his own head ? was it with liis heels He retired chagrined, applied closely to his trade, and never after mentioned his borrowed head.” Every psychologist must have experienced the greater difficulty in dealing with and destroying the errors and extravagances of an educated than of a simple and uninstructed mind. With the former it is often a contest of wits, a subtle controversy, in which truth and reason may be discomfited ; with the other, the physician is a superior being, from whom even doubtful propositions are received without hesitation. But, at the same time, the power of the cultivated mind and refined sentiment, even when partially chilled and dead- ened by disease, in assisting to carry out the moral economics of an asylum, has been found so great as to have suggested the association of sane minds with the insane for the purpose of affording suitable companionship, of leading back, but insensibly and without the pretence of treatment or guidance, towards reason and right feeling, and of carrying a healthy and earth-smelling atmosphere into the tainted and transcendental regions of a madhouse. A body of female volunteers was formed in connection with the York Eetreat for this purpose. Attempts of the same kind were made at Montrose and elsewhere, but never upon a scale commensurate with the anticipated benefit. Besides these efforts to act upon large numbers possessing some quality, or it may be some defect in common, the great labour and cunning of classification remains behind. You are called upon to separate certain incompatible natures, to eliminate the obnoxious, to seclude the marpeace. Isolation has been dispensed with altoge- ther in Lincoln, Stafford, &c.; it should be rarely resorted to, only on the failure of other modes of establishing harmony, and chiefly to calm, protect, or otherwise benefit the individual; in fact, sliould be a prescription, not a matter of police; but it may become incum- bent in order to remove obstacles to more extensive classification. It is sound policy to entrust the weak to the strong; the violent or malicious may be safely confided to the acquisitive, or vain, or reli- gious monomaniac. The affectionate and happy may be associated with the desponding and despairing, and the helpless idiot may become the adopted child of some mother whose only delusion is mourning over the fate of infants that she never bore. It might appear a natural rule to assemble together individuals l>re.sOTting the same forms of disease—maniacs with maniacs, melan- cholics with melancholics. Such a jdan would afford facilities for the scientific observation and medical treatment of disease, but ex- perience has ])rovcd that such a course concentrates and intensilies 2