The Press.
London, England, 1856-08-30 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

The attendants on these unhappy lunatics were male.
factors, selected, not for any of the gentler virtues, from the
prison. The patients were bailed with chains, and
defenceless against the brutality of their keepers ; and the
building resounded, day and night, with cries and yells,
and the clanking of chains and fetters. We cannot wonder
that the keepers were sometimes murdered : that the
maniac, more maddened by pain and insult, often learned
to dissemble his revenge, and waited to effect it.

During the revolutionary period Pinel con-
tinued his humane and enlightened efforts for
the amelioration of the insane, and he had
the good fortune to be seconded and succeeded
by men scarcely inferior to himself. The
lunatic asylums in France have been con-
tinually improving since 1792, yet the best of
them, we infer from Dr. Conolly's book, are now
much below the best in our own land. Attention
was' accidentally directed to the cruel treat-
ment of the insane in this country about the
time that the reformation commenced in Paris.
We are old enough to recollect the day
when the very first indications of insanity
were met with a strait waistcoat, and when
every form of mechanical restraint, with
chains, manacles, and scourges, were thought
to be so indispensable for the treatment of the
insane as to excite no surprise. In all the
public lunatic asylums were some cells, ex-
hibited as a curiosity to visitors, where
maniacs, chained to walls, with a litter of
straw, were kept in a loathsome state of filth.
Dr. Conolly remarks :
It would almost seem as if, at the period from the
middle to near the end of the last century, the superinten-
dents of the insane had become frantic in cruelty, from
the impunity with which their despotism was attended.
Some of the German physicians meditated even romantic
modes of alarm and torture ; wished for machinery by
which a patient, just arriving at an asylum, and after
being drawn with frightful clangour over a metal bridge
across a moat, could be suddenly raised to the top of a
tower, and as suddenly lowered into a dark and subterra-
nean cavern ; and they avowed that if the patient could be
made to alight among snakes and serpents it would be
better still. People not naturally cruel became habituated
to severity until all feelings of humanity were forgotten.
used to be astonished, even seventeen years ago, to see
humane physicians going daily round the wards of asylums,
mere spectators of every form of distressing coercion,
without a word of sympathy, or any order for its mitigation.
But men's hearts had on this subject become gradually
hardened. In medical works of authority the first prin-
ciple in the treatment of lunatics was laid down to be fear,
and the best means of producing fear was said to be
punishment, and the best mode of punishment wasdefined
to be stripes. The great authority of Dr. Cullen, certainly
one of the most enlightened physicians of his time, was
given to this practice,!although his theory of madness was
that it depended upon an increased excitement of the
brain.

The author then proceeds to give particular
instances of the kind of tortures invented for
tho restraint of the insane :
By degrees, restraints became more and more severe,
and torture more and more ingenious. Among many cruel
devices, an unsuspecting patient was sometimes induced
to walk across a treacherous floor ; it gave way, and the
patient fell into a bath of surprise, and was there half
drowned and half frightened to death.

We read with almost as much amusement as wcnder the
respectful acknowledgment of Dr. Hallaran, that Dr. Cox
made known to the profession the " safe and effectual
remedy " of the circulating swing, the invention of which
Dr. Cox " generously gives the credit of " to Dr. Darwin ;
this invention being one by means of which the maniacal
or melancholic patient, fast bound on a sort of couch, or in
a chair, was rotated at various rates up to one hundred
gyrations in a minute.
The effect of this last diabolical contrivance
was to make the patient frightfully giddy and
sick, and the author supposes that it was only
through fatal consequences frequently result-.
ing from its use, that the recommendation of
Dr. Hallaran, that no " well-regulated institu-
" tion intended for the relief and reception of
" insane persons should be unprovided " with
one of these machines, came to be disregarded.
The ingenuity of some members of the faculty
was exercised to improve this barbarous in-
vention:—

1)r. Cox had advised its being used in some " hopeless "
cases, in the dark ; with the addition of unusual noises,
smells, &c.; that every sense might be assailed; but I do
not think this advice was ever acted upon.
Mechanical restraints of a thousand different
kinds were in univeral use :

The simplest and cheapest means was by the use of
chains, to which. as more lenient, succeeded strong waist-
coats confining the arms to the trunk, the legs being
secured by hobbles. Handcuffs, and leather muffs and
straps, have been much relied upon, with complications, in
difficult cases, investing the patient with a kind of heavy
circular collar and harness. Patients were seen standing
by a wall to which their hands were chained, or sitting on
a bench, to which they were strongly secured. Others

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were fastened in a sort of chair resembling the ancient
watchman's box, and many were chained or strapped down
in bed. The methods of restraint varied acconling to the
ingenuity of the superintendents ; but the object of all the
methods was the same—to restrain the movements of the
patient. The vagrant action of the limbs was suppressed,
but the source of irritation in the brain left out of °onside•
ration.

The condition of the patients in these
asylums was infinitely worse than when such
" poor Toms " as Edgar personated in King
Lear, were left to roam about the country at
will. Wretched as they were, and exposed to
cold and hunger, they yet had their liberty, and
were less dangerous than when chained in the
asylums intended for their refuge. The York
Lunatic Asylum seems to have been one of
the worst in the kingdom :
So early as 1791 it happened that a female patient, of
the Society of Friends, was placed in this institution. As
her family lived at a distance from York, they requested
some of their acquaintances to visit her. These ac-
quaintances were denied admission; and in a
.few weeks
the unhappy patient died. This circumstance gave rise
to uncomfortable suspicions ; or rather it confirmed bus-
picions which had for some time existed. The Society of
Friends, abstaining from any direct reflection on the
asylum, acted with their characteristic benevolence and
promptness, and, although scarcely able •to • command
sufficiently ample resources, resolved to institute an
asylum of their own.
The result was the foundation of the Retreat at York;
which was opened a few years afterward. Of this ad-
mirable asylum, the first in Europe in which every en-
lightened principle of treatment was carried into' effect,
the chief promoter was the late William Tuke, of York.
His worthy grandson, Samuel Tuke. who is still living,
has continued, up to a very advanced period of- life, to be
a frequent visitor' and most active governor of 'that ad-
mirable•establishment ; and for readers desirous to know
the views which ought to prevail in all lunatic asylums, I
could not even now refer to any work in which they are
more perspicuously explained than in Samuel Take's ac-
count of the Retreat at York, published in 1813. The
substitution of sympathy for gross unkindness, severity,
and " stripes ; " the diversion of the mind from its excite-
ments and griefs by various occupations ; and a wise con-
fidence in the patients when they promised to control
themselves, led to the prevalence of order and neatness,
and nearly banished furious mania from this wisely-
devised place of recovery.

With the opening of the Retreat the refor-
mation in„England commenced ; but down to
1815, and even to a later period, every form of
cruelty was exercised in lunatic asylums.
Dr. Conolly collects some details from a re-
port of the committee of the House of Com-
mons in 1815:

In the women's galleries in Bethlem they found in one
of the side rooms " about ten patients, each chained by
one arm or leg to the wall ; the chain allowing them
merely to stand up by the bench or form fixed to the wall,
or to sit down on it." Fora dress, each had only a sort of
blanket gown, made like a dressing-gown, but with
nothing to fasten it round the body. The feet were
without shoes or stockings. Some of these patients were
lost in imbecility, dirty, and offensive ; associated with
them were others capable of coherent conversation, and
sensible and accomplished. Many women were locked up
in their cells, chained, without clothing, and with only one
blanket for a covering. In the men's wing, six patients
in the side room were chained close to the wall, five were
handcuffed, and one was locked to the wall by the right
arm, as well as by the right leg. Except the blanket-gown,
these men had no clothing; the room had the appearance
of a dog-kennel. Chains were universally substituted for
the strait-waistcoat. Those who were not cleanly, and all
who were disinclined to get up, were allowed to lie in
bed; in what state may be imagined. In one cell they
found a patient, a representation of whose condition is
preserved in a plate published in Esquirol's work, not
much to the honour of our English treatment. This
patient's name was Norris. He had been a powerful and
violent man. Having on one occasion resented what he
considered some improper treatment by his keeper, he
was fastened by a long chain, which was ingeniously passed
through a wall into the next room, where the victorious
keeper, out of the patient's reach, could drag the unfortu-
nate man close to the wall whenever he pleased. To pre-
vent this sort of outrage, poor Norris muffled the chain
with straw; but the savage inclinations of the keeper were
either checked by no superintending eye, or the officers of
the asylum partook of his cruelty and his fears ; for now a
new and refined torture for the patient was invented, in
the shape of an ingenious apparatus of iron. " A stout
iron ring was rivetted round his neck, from which a sheet
chain passed to a ring made to slide upwards or downwards
on an upright massive iron bar, more .thaneix feet high ,
inserted into the walL Round his body a strong iron
bar, about two inches wide, was rivetted ; on each aids
of the bar was a circular projection which, being fastened
to, and inclosing each of his arms, pinioned them dose to
his sides."

The effect of this apparatus was, that the patient could
indeed raise himself up so as to stand against the wall, bat
could not stir one foot from it, could not walk one step,
and could not even lie down, except on his back ; and in
this thraldom he bad lived for twelve years. Duringintich
of that time he is reported to have been rational in his
conversation. 'But' for him, in all those twelve years,
there had 'been no variety of any kind, no refreshing
change, no relief : no fresh air ; no exercise ; no sight of
fields or gardens, or earth or hum. Each atiserabia jig

832

was like another, and each night. At length release came,
which he only lived about a year to enjoy. It is painful
to have to add, that this long-continued punishment had
the recorded approbation of all the authorities of the
hospital. Nothing can more forcibly illustrate the harden•
ing effect of being habitual witnesses of cruelty, and the
process which the heart of man undergoes when all3wed to
exercise irresponsible power.

Down to 1839 these abuses continued in a
greater or less degree. The appointment of
Dr. Conolly as physician to the Hanwell
Asylum marks the period when a more
humane system became firmly established.
This gentleman has led a life of usefulness,
such as it has been the lot of but a few per-
sons, highly favored by Heaven, to enjoy. In
his introductory observations to this volume
he modestly speaks of the duty which those
persons who have been instrumental in pro-
moting any useful work are under to leave the
work as secure as possible ; and he has justly
conceived that a record of his experience may
tend to the perfecting and perpetuation of an
enlightened and humane system for the treat-
ment of lunatics.

Dr. Canully's success must be mainly
ascribed to the firmness with which be ad-
hered to one fundamental rule—that insane
patients should be subject to no kind of
mechanical restraint whatever. Accordingly
under his management patients were never
bound, or muffled, or deprived of the free
movement of their body and limbs. He came
to Hanwell in 1839. and for the first year
some of the mildest forms of restraint—as
mufflers for the hands—were permitted. But
even the attendants, who had at first been
averse to the new system, were so satisfied,
by experience of its efficacy, that these re-
straints were,) in the second or third year of
Dr. Conolly's superintendence, given up.
Strait-waistcoats and mufflers were collected
in a heap and burnt. All coercion-chairs,
ehains, and handcuffs were banished the
asylum ; the Bastile-s) stem under which these
unfortunate creatures had suffered was wholly
abolished, and so far as the free use of their
limbs was concerned they were free,—an esti-
mable boon to the insane, and a reform of
incalculable importance in medical treatment.
But how then was order preserved, when
the violence of the patients threatened danger
to themselves and others ? Such eases were
very few. Patients were commonly brought
to Ilanwell securely bound, with their frenzy
heightened from the effects of their confine-
ment. The first thing done was to set them
at liberty, then they were by watchful atten-
dants persuaded to bathe, to put on clean and
proper clothing, and to take some food. No
harsh word was ever spoken. Very often the
effects of this kind treatment, so different
from whet they had ever experienced before,
was little short of miraculous. Mercy came
with a word of power to their distracted
minds. Often they shed tears, and then the
process of recovery was begun. Nearly all
obeyed the moral influence to which they
were subjected, and were docile But in some
cases the frenzy was not to be restrained, and
the patient attempted acts of violence. The
attendants were on the watch ; the maniac
was at once seized securely but without harsh-
ness, and borne to a padded room, where it
was impossible that frenzy, however convul-
sive, could result in injury. But this room
was airy and comfortable ; the light was sub-
dued ; the bed was encased in ticking impos-
sible to be torn ; the patient's clothes resisted
all efforts to rend them In this seclusion the
patient remained till his fury had spent itself;
but he was frequently surveyed through the
inspection plate in the door. After two or
three hours he was visited ; he heard only
words of kindness ; he saw that every arrange-
ment was made for his convenience. When
calm he was restored to liberty. The effect of
this treatment was invariably to give the
patient confidence in those about him and to
make him amenable to control. The volume
abounds with most instructive instances of
the success of this system as a esretire mode.
One most curious case is related on the
authority of Dr. Hitchmen of the Derbyshire
asylum :

One, who was a butcher by trade, slaughtered a pig for
the institution within a fortnight after his chews were
removed ; and from that time waa employed daily in useful
occupations until he was dischar6al--ciind.