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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    either chains or a dungeon. He became humiliated by this unusual isolation, and after hesitating for a long time, gradually introduced himself to the society of the other patients. From this time, his notions became more just and sensible, and in less than a year he acknowledged the absurdity of his previous prepossession, and was dismissed from the Bicetre.” When a patient finds himself within the -walls of an asylum, into which, perhaps, he has been unexpectedly or unwittingly introduced, it commonly happens, that his first impulse is to break forth into an abuse of the friends who have placed him, wrongfully and causelessly, as he conceives, in such an institution. On these occasions, if the patient be calmly and kindly reasoned with—if he be quietly told that he has been placed there from no motive but the desire of im- proving his health—that he will one day take a different view of the circumstances—that he will be treated with every consideration, and not detained a moment longer than necessary; and if, at the same time, the comfortable and contented appearance of the other patients be pointed out to him, it will generally be found that his irritation abates, and from being angry or even violent, he becomes quiet and good humoured. But suppose such a patient ushered into an asylum, with the irritability and excitement incidental to his malady, exas- perated by the idea of recent ill usage and deceit; and that, on enter- ing a place against which he is strongly prepossessed, and in which he imagines that he has been confined by unfair means and for dis- honest purposes, he finds all his previous notions confirmed by being put under restraint; or even, should that not be deemed necessaiy in his case, by seeing others around him subjected to it, is it at all likely that in such circumstances a soothing manner and a kind address would have the same effect in quieting his excitement 01 gaining his confidence? Even when only employed in the most violent cases, it may, we think, be fairly asserted, that restraint is injurious, being calculated to increase the excitement and keep up the violence. The experience of all those who have made the actual experiment of dispensing with it, bears out this assertion. When Pinel, shortly before he threw open the cells and cages in which the miserable inmates of the Bice- tre were confined, visited it in company with a member of the Go- vernment, with the view of inducing the latter to give him permission to carry out his humane purpose, the functionary, the well known Couthon, who was not peculiarly likely to be shocked by spectacles of horror, was so appalled by the scene he witnessed, the abuse he received on all sides, “ and the confused sounds of cries, vociferations, and clanking of chains in the filthy and damp cells,” that he stag- gered at the physician’s proposal, and told him “ that he might do