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

THE PRESS.

It has been objected to Dr. Conolly's strong
advocacy of the non-restraint system, that by
his own confession he does employ restraint—
as, for example, the restraint exercised by the
attendants, and the confinement of the padded
room. But he observes, and we think con-
clusively, that there is a difference of principle
between such forms of restraint and the me-
chanical restraints formerly employed. In the
padded room the patient's body and limbs are
free, and, as regards the control exercised by
the attendants, it is little more than momen•
tary, and entirely different from the restraints
of coercion-chairs, strait-waistcoats, and
chains. It appears highly probable that
when the mind is frenzied, the free action of
the body acts as a kind of safety-valve, by
which the mental excitement may be thrown
off. To confine the body is in all cases to fix
and heighten the excitement of the mind; it
is to restrain one of those impulses of nature
by which mental passion can get rid of its
dangerous energy. With the knowledge we
now have it may be positively affirmed, that
all the mechanical restraints of past times
only tended to confirm the worst and most
dangerous species of insanity.
There is another argument against mecha-
nical restraints urged by Dr. Conolly with irre
sistible force. When once adopted they relax
the vigilance of the attendants, and thus be-
come a substitute for the care and attention
which ought to be incessantly exercised. It
is, besides. impossible to guard against their
abuse. Attendants will, for their own sake,
resort to them as frequently as they can. The
only safeguard that can be adopted against
their unnecessary use is to abolish them alto-
gether. The author describes in detail the
precautions he found necessary to enforce to
prevent confinement in the padded room being
too long or too frequent.
That the non-restraint system can be carried
out, and with the happiest effects, is abun-
dantly proved by the evidence here collected.
Besides Dr. Conolly's own experience, which
alone would be decisive, we read that Dr.
Palmer, of the Lincolnshire asylum, reports
that he manages 2:10 patients without a single
instrument of coercion; Dr. Campbell, of
Essex, with 300 patients reports, " In no case
" has mechanical restraint been resorted to,
" and no means for such coercion exist in the
" house." Dr. Shirlock, of Worcester, with
200 patients says, " No means of controlling a
" patient by restraints exist in the house."
Mr. Wilkes, of the Stafford asylum, concludes
his report for 1854, " Mechanical restraint em-
" ployed in the treatment of the insane is
" both unnecessary and injurious." Noticing
these and other evidences of the growth of
the non-restraint system, Dr. Conolly says :

Proofs accumulate every year that the best principles of
treatment now find almost general acceptance. There
was for a time no asylum in which such strong demonstra-
tions of dislike to the new system were made as in that at
Wakefield ; but even there the coercion chairs have been
at length destroyed, and the medical superintendent, Mr.
Alderson, in a report, dated Jatuary let, ls'►6, says:—
"No mechanical restraint has been used daring the
past year, and seclusion has also been considerably
diminished."

Contrasting lunatic asylums conducted on
these principles with the treatment of lunatics
titty or sixty years ago, how vast is the change!
Chains, scourges, coercion•chairs, manacles,
strait-waistcoats, and the innumerable instru-
ments of torture devised by perverted in-
genuity. are gone. The private madhouses of
past times were among the worst of their
kind. A pleasing accsunt is given of the well-
managed institutions of our own day :

Doors opening into gardens; Bowers blooming round
the windows; wide and light galleries; windows com-
manding agreeable views ; sitting-rooms and bed-rooms,
wbere neither bars, nor guards, nor heavy locks and keys
are seen or require I : convenient fnrnitnre ; cleanliness
everywhere: good bedding: baits and lavatories of the
best construction : provision f; ,r e smith in winter, anti
for coollies:. and shade in summer and every addition
that can aid or protect the feeble, anal benefit the sick, by
day or by night, affording alleviation, and comfort, and
rest for all the forms of pain and sorrow, present them-
selves in these noble institutions to the eye of the *nest
careless ohserver, and afford a deeper satisfaction to
those who know the effect of all these thiogs on the
patients than the contemplation of (Le grandeur of temples
or of palaces.

This passage is highly suggestive. The
greatest memorials a nation can leave of its
exiatence are not material. the monument*

SATURDAY,

and structures we admire may but record the
cruelty of despotic power, the degradation of
a people, or the ferocity of their sports. It is
the institutions, however humble the build-
ings in which they were embodied, that
humanised and elevated a people that are
truly worthy our admiration Should the day
ever come when our England is covered with
ruins, and when yet high civilisation exists
in other countries, those sites which mark
where once stood spacious hospitals to relieve
suffering, and lunatic asylums to assuage the
direst evil that can afflict humanity, will
arouse in the mind of the observer stronger
sympathy than the pyramids erected amid the
groaning of a captive people, or the theatres
built for the merciless sports of a ferocious
people.
Patients now leave the better order of insane
asylums with a feeling of gratitude for the re-
fuge afforded them. Some affecting instances
are mentioned by Dr. Conolly, which came
under his own notice :

It was extremely touching, in these my early days of
asylum life, when every day was eventful, and every event
was instructive, to find that more tears began to be shed
by the female patients on leaving the asylum than on en-
tering it. Before going, several of them soon began to
petit not only to be allowed to go into the matron's
parlour, and the kitchens, storerooms, and work-rooms in
which they had been employed, and to tske a kind and
grateful leave of the officers: but also, as a particular
favour, to visit the particular ward in which they had been
placed on their first coming to the asylum—generally a
refractory ward—where they would embrace the nurses
and many of the poor patients, and with affectionate ex-
pressions, and sobs, and broken words, would promise to
come and see them again if they contd. These promises
were often performed. Witnessing these scenes, not with-
out emotion, and reviewing them at the quiet close of
each busy and anxious day, I began to feel assnred that
the system we were pursuing, however difficult, could not
be wrong.

To Mr. Gardiner Hill. of the Lincoln asylum,
does Dr. Conolly ascribe the merit of being
the first to practise the non-restraint system;
and it was on going over this establishment,
previous to his appointment to Hanwell, that
the author conceived the idea of carrying out
to the fullest extent the humane principles
which he saw in such admiral,le action. Dr.
Conolly's merit is the greater, as he often had
to contend with strong opposition, principally
on the ground of expense. He fought as he
best could against the effects of a narrow-
minded economy, and though some of his
humane plans were thwarted, he had, perhaps,
en the whole, reason to be satisfied that so
much latitude was allowed him.

Whether it will be practicable to employ, as
we should think might be done, the remaining
years of this admirable man's life in some
useful enterprise, or whether some testimony
to the great value of his labours should not be
borne, we pretend not to determine. We are
happy that he has, by the publication of his
volume, established the non-restraint system
on too sure a basis ever to be overthrown. He
has further, by the mere modest record of his
labours, secured for himself a place among
those distinguished philanthropists whose
favored lot it has been to ameliorate huma-
nity, and to bring heaven a little nearer to
earth.

The Social History of the People of the Southern
Counties of England in Past Centuries.
From the Researches of George Roberts.
London : Longmaus
THIS is a volume on manners and old customs
iu a particular locality, exalted in the titlepage
into a "social history." Whether there can be
such a thing, strictly speaking, as a social
" history," is a question in literary criticism
that has engaged the deliberate study of both
ancient and modern critics and historians.
The ancients were inclined to decide the ques-
tion in the negative, but the moderns seem to
think in favour of the affirmative. A dic-
tionary on customs and habits may certainly
be compiled, yet ought such a work to be callcd
a " history " which implies narrative, consi-
deration of cause and effect, and a progress
towards the completion of a unity? Mr.
Maeaul:iv. in his fourth chapter, has ventured
to show If ow he would write " social history."
But, to carry out his principle of composition,
libraries not volumes, cyclopfedias not chap-
tam would be reiniret A hUttdred volumes

AUGUST 30, 1856.

would be necessary, on that scale of computa
tion, to bring up our knowledge of socia
history since the days of Queen Elizabeth.
The truth on this question appears to be.
that as historians were formerly too cold and
general, so now there is a tendency lest they
should become oppressively trivial. A vast
part of " social" history must necessarily be
ephemeral, and wholly unworthy of the remem-
brance of posterity. How Charles I. and
Cromwell played their parts must always be of
vast interest to English posterity ; but the
shape of their hats and tooth-brushes, or
the exact way in which the Cavaliers drank
their wine, or the Puritans ate their suppers,
is of comparatively little interest. The Evan-
gelists have into a few pages crawded an
enormous amount of incidents, facts, cha-
racters, and sublime passages of eloquence.
The entire absence of trivialities, the austere
contempt for irrelevant points, and the direct.
ness of their narratives, ought to receive more
attention from the proficients in diffuseness in
our own days. The Greek historians would
have admired the inspired brevity of the
Evangelists.
Mr. Roberts overrates the value of the facts
of which his work is composed,and he does not
clearly apprehend the controversy to which he
alludes in tie following dedication to Mr.
Macaulay. His work is intended, Mr. Roberts
says,

to prove suggestive in many ways in determining whether
there are or not many inestimable advantages enjoyed by
Cie moderns over their ancestors.

There can be no question at all as to whether
there are many inestimable advantages en-
joyed by the moderns. The discussion is as
to whether there is more real happiness, or
whether the happiness has increased in pro-
portion to the intellectual enlargement? If
happiness be not a thing of class, if peasants
can have as many delights as peers, if village
sempstresses can enjoy this earth with as pure
gratifications as the titled dames for whom
they toil, why should not rude and simple
ages have their fair share of enjoyment?
Such questions are vague, shadowy, and
metaphysicsl. To moot such subjects, and
leave them undecided, was the besetting fault
of the Scotch school of philosophy. Mr.
Macaulay in his brilliant writinaa has too
often fallen into the same error. Mr. Roberts
is an enthusiastic devotee at the Macaulay
shrine, but in the second page of his preface
be involuntarily gives a rough knock at his
idol :

No one can meet the present or counsel for the future
without turning an attentive retrospect into the former
condition and events of his country. The novelist and
other writers have created an ideal past, a fanciful conven
ticoality which totally misleads. The object of these pages
is to convey a faithful portraiture of bygone years, the
condition of our countrymen, their manners, and state of
pro .9 ess.

And who is to weigh the farts? It is obvious
that " causality," the power of tracing things to
their origin, is absolutely required. But the
costume writer, or compiler of awl, has rarely
that power. Mr. Roberts wildly plunges into
the question in this fashion :

What prodigies has not the genius of some men com•
passed 'within a few years ! They excite, and de.---ervedly
so, our admiration, that man, the highest of created beings,
has attained to such a pitch of excellence. How many,
however, view the results of this progress with widely
different feelings. They clearly in their expressions imply
that man is ton far in advance of what he should kn )1r and
practise, and that he i 4 guilty of presumption, and that
the Deity views with rival feeling the onward cotirse of in-
yention and science. So was Jupiter reported by the her
to have been exposed to the aggression of the giants,
when Pelion heaped upon Ossa anticipated the prodigies of
modern philosophers.

" When Pelion heaped upon Ossa anticiposted
" the Irodiyies of modern philosophers"! Our
breath is taken away ! Let us proceed to
exemplify some of the defects of this author's
mode of composition. Mr. Roberts writes:—

Thncydides describes the ancient state of the coasts of
Greece in language that would be suitable to a picture in
olden time of the coasts of England. The old towns of
both countries, owing to the long continuance of piracy,
were built further off from the sea, or inland. The later
towns were built on the seashores and on isthmuses, sue•
rounded by walls for protection.
And was not this the case in England? The firstchnrch,
the parent church of many towiss, is tr.wn the sea. Towns
that quite eclipse the original ♦illage exiat, b.it are mach
more reoent Thus. fir example, see Wake. the parent of
Weystooth; Sutton Poynta, of Ideleomite ; Littleham. of
Exmouth; Broadwater, of Wording; Tor, of Torquay;