Observations on the expediency of abolishing mechanical restraint in the treatment of the insane in lunatic asylums : a probationary essay / by John Crawford.

  • Crawford, John.
Date:
1842
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations on the expediency of abolishing mechanical restraint in the treatment of the insane in lunatic asylums : a probationary essay / by John Crawford. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    OBSERVATIONS, &c. Nothing, perhaps, exhibits more strikingly the progress of an en- lightened and humane philosophy, than the alterations which have recently taken place in the system and management of those impor- tant institutions which are devoted to the treatment of the Insane. At a period by no means remote, such establishments wore an aspect very widely different from what they do at present. The lunatic of those days, was looked upon with a singular mixture of dread and pity. Regarded as the victim of a peculiar and mysterious malady of mind, and as placed beyond the pale of humanity, by a disease which was inaccessible to all modes of moral treatment, and not amenable to the usual resources of medical science, little else was desired by his friends, than the means of concealing him from a world to which they believed him already hopelessly dead, and the oppor- tunity of shutting him up in a confinement where he might be pre- vented from indulging those propensities of violence and ferocity, which they regarded as the results of some inscrutable change in his mental constitution, and of which they stood in so much awe. Hence, at that period, such institutions not unfrequently combined the attri- butes of the prison-house and the grave; and the restraints, punish- ments, and severity of the one, were veiled by the secrecy and silence of the other. Shut up in cells and cages—chains, fetters, iron collars, iron masks, and leather muzzles, the scourge, the blows, and the threats of a brutal keeper, together with the indiscriminate use of tartar-emetic and drastic purgatives, probably prescribed by an ignorant and non-medical attendant, constituted the treatment to which the hapless lunatic was subjected. The furious imprecations of the maniac, and the clanking of his fetters, were to be heard, mingled with the blows of the lash and the oaths of the attendant; while the drivelling of hopeless idiocy, and the emaciation of person, and distortion of figure caused by long confinement and restraint, illustrated the efficacy of the treatment. This picture is not an over- charged one, and many of its descriptions apply to even our principal