The Sun.
London, England, 1822-09-21 00:00:00

BETHLEM HOSPITAL

The annual entertainment of the Governors
of Bethlem Hospital took place on ~the 4th of
July, on which occasion Lord ROBERT SEYMOUR;
one of the Governors (upon his health being
drank) expressed himself to the following effect :

" I have always set great value upon public dinners of this
sort, as being useful in exciting a spirit of good-will to our
fellow creatures ; we are interested in the same objects ; we
sympathise in the same sentiments, and thus our general stock
of benevolence is increased.

I have always thought it an important part of my duty,• as
a Governor of Bethlem Hospital, to go through the wards
of it, and to see every patient in them, whenever the oppor-
tunity has occurred. The visitation of a lunatic is always
highly agreeable to him, as proving that he is not forgotten,
and abandoned by society. It, is also a strong incentive to
.the person who has the care of him, in the discharge of his
duty. Humanity has lately made great advances in the care
of insanity ; we live in times which are much more favour-
able than those which have past, to persons afflicted with
insanity. A man now talks to his friends without repug-
nance, or his near relation being disturbed in mind, and lie
thinks it his duty to see such relative frequently in
,his con.
finenient ; whereas, till within the last few years, when a
person was sent to a mad-house, his family made as much
a point of putting him out of their minds, as if he had been
consigned to the grave. I have been all my life in the prac-
tice of visiting the asylums of lunatics, as well upon the
Continent as at home ; formerly, perhaps, from motives of cu-
riosity only ; but, I trust, latterly from some desire to serve my
fellow.creatures, and I am sure, that I have not, on ten occa-
sions, witnessed a
lunatic visited by either a relative or a friend,
till within the last few years.
" Whenever I have of late years gone through the wards ofour
Hospital, I have been much pleased with every thing I have ob-
served in them. Very little personal restraint is now imposed
upon the patients, and when it has been unavoidably applied, it
has been only for a short time : no unfortunate sufferers are now
• chained without clothes to our walls, as formerly ; no wretched
patient is encaged in iron ; and the strait waistcoat is now so
much out of use in our Hospital, that there was this day no one
of the two hundred and twenty-three patients in the house so
confined. I think it my duty upon every occasion to deprecate
this horrible Instrument of restraint, as being highly unfavour-
able to respiration and health, indenting the chest, and there-
fore especially injurious in the case of females, and equally
hurtful by its pressure on the stomach ; to, say nothing of its
being a very heating dress. I have also a further and most
substantial objection to the use of the waistcoat, being quite
sure that, where it is used as an instrument of personal re-
straint, it will sometimes be brought into action as an instru.
ment of punishment ; a harmless patient, when under great
excitement, will sometimes give a slap to the face of his
keeper ; the keeper angrily applies the strait-waistcoat to him,
and is naturally governed in the tightness with which he ap-
plies it, by the degree of resentment which he bears to the
offending lunatic.
" I must here mention a circumstance which I am sure will
prove agreeable to you,' which is, that, much as I have con-
versed with the more rational of our patients, as well as with
persons who have been discharged from the Hospital, I have
never heard one word of complaint offered against either of
the physicians or surgeons, those patients having always on the
contrary spoken to me, with respect, of the skill of those offi-
cers, and with gratitude of their tenderness and attention ; a
fact which has always surprised me, as every patient knows that
his physician is the only person who stands in the way of his
enlargement. I never passed through the female galleries of
the Hospital without being struck with marked calmness,
tranquillity, and cheerfulness, which prevail among the patients,
and which are greatly attributable to the needle-work which is
put into their hands by our humane and valuable Matron.
" To employ the hands, is to relieve the mind of a lunatic,
and it certainly is, to increase the chance of recovery. Hence it
must be matter of deep regret, that means have not yet been de-
vised of giving with safety work to our male patients, as is the
practice of several well regulated country asylums. Bodily
labour engages and consumes that power which gives activity to
the mind, and experience has proved that it is a powerful mean
of checking and abating that unnatural activity of mind, which
is the usual characteristic of insanity. This principle is strongly
illustrated in the case of a very interesting young woman, now
in the Hospital, whom I saw some months ago quite unem-
ployed, talking rapidly and incessantly, and much confused in
her ideas, when I naturally asked the Matron why she had not
given to her needle-work, who told me that she never attempt-
ed to force any work on a patient—and, that this woman had
repeatedly objected to all work when offered to her. Soon
after this, the young woman, complaining much of het con-
finement, earnestly requested that I would obtain her en-
largement, which I undertook to endeavour to do, on two
conditions :—the first was, that she should talk less, and
the second, 'that she should work more t --to these she im-
mediately agreed, and some coarse linen was put into her
hands, which was done, by her with manifest indiffer-
ence and carelessness ; but it did not abate her incessant
talking, or produce the slightest difference in her manner.—.
It was then judged expedient by the Matron, that some
more nice and difficult work should be given to her, which
was done, and this employed her for some weeks, at the
end of which tiine I again saw her, and was much struck by
her composure and reserve. I then asked her whether she
was net much better ? She answered that she did not know
ho•,-. it, was, but the difficillt work she had lately done had cer-
tainly done good to her head. This passed last week, and 1
was much pleased to see her this day brought up by the phy-
sician, who recommended her going out on trial for a month ;
and I have no doubt that the improvement of her mind was pro-
duced by the co-exertion of the hands and eyes, required by the
more difficult work she last performed.
" Mental disease, I believe, is very seldom traceable to
merely physical causes; if this be so, we must have re-
course to a moral agency for its correction and cure, and I
know none that is so likely -to succeed as the constant em-
ployment of the hands in such work as will somewhat
occupy the mind. I well recollect that, in answer to the Circu-
lar Letter which your Committee wrote some years ago to all
the country asylums, to learn their practice and success, several
of them told us that they had effected many cures among those
of their patients, who were of the labouring clAs, and who were
therefore prone to work. Now, the greater part of our patients
are of this description, and I should recommend their being em-
ployed in our garden if it were inclosed with walls : our funds,
however, do not now enable us to wall in the garden to prevent
the escape of the patients ; and I fear that there would be some
difficulty in finding such garden tools as might be safely placed
in their hands. We might, however, easily contrive to employ
them in the house in platting straw, in making matting, pa-,
per bags for the shops, list shoes and carpets, and various other
articles. Work is now done by only two male patients, eof I
whom makes shoes, and the other straw baskets ; b se
patients are very properly allowed to sell their work, a n-
not see.why others should not be encouraged to work the
same way."
• His Lordship again congratulated the Governors on the •
remarkable improvement which had been of late effected,
both in the moral and medical management of the insane (laying
particular stress'upon the former.) He adverted to the nu-
merous testimonies of approbation which were constantly offered
in the visiting-book by persons of every rank and profession,
and by natives of every country ; and he concluded by urging
upon all the Governors the duty of more frequent personal in-
spection and attention to the important Institution over which
they presided,

CITY, FRIDAY liVENiNG.

Consols for Cash`opened this morning, at 811,
and those for the October settlement at 81i. The sales of some
eminent brokers, however, during the day, reduced the former
to 81, and the latter to 81i sellers. Before the close of the market
they in some degree recovered themselves, and concluded at
nearly their opening value. Bank Stock for the account is some-
where about 251 a 251 A, but there is a general opinion that
at the present moment the Bunk'pnyits are not equal to a divi-
dend of 10 per cent. on their principal stock. It is, however,
supposed, that there is a saving from their former profits
which may now amount to somewhere about five millions, for
the public can know nothing which is cerokiis of the affairs
of the Bank, so long as the Directors are not compelled to
render annual accounts to the Proprietors. Out of this saving
the present dividends may for a year or two be paid, but the
great anxiety which was shewn at the last Meeting by the
Proprietors to return to a small note circulation, for the benefit
vett* community, no doubt, speaks volumes in its way, as
this is probably a surer source from which 10 per cent. divi-,
dend may be expected in future, than any saving fund which
the Bank at present possesses. In some of the French Funds
a great deal of business continues to be effected. A report that
Louis the Desired had almost been poisoned by feeding on
ducks' livers, depressed however the value of the French funds,
their fate being supposed to be intimately connected with the
life of this legitimate Sovereign. Spanish Bonds still conti.
nue to attract the general attention of Capitalists. They yield
better interest at present than any other description of Euro-
pean stock. The new Russian Loan is a shade dearer. Letters
have this day been received from Maracaibo, dated on the
20th of June, at which time that interesting state remained
in the enjoyment of great tranquillity. There is no inimical
force now in the entire Continent of South America, capa-
ble of offering the slightest opposition to the perfect freedom
of the different independent States, and their wants must in
future form a most important vent for British productive labour.
—A few years of peace, after the splendid and unassisted
efforts which they have made in the cause of civilization, will
produce to_them riches as well as independence; and much
will it be for the interest of England,, by patronizing their
infant efforts, to gain the friendship of their matured pros-
perity. Individual loss may, in some instances, attend
over stocked markets; but a more perfect knowledge of
the means of reimbursement, and the actual amount of con-
sumption, must soon render profitable returns certain. Colum-
bian and Chilian Stock this day are much inquired for, and
the acknowledgment of the independence of Hayti and the
South American States, is only necessary on the part of the
British Government, to cause a great advance in their value.—
The new Prussian Loan has this day recovered a slight deßres-
sion which occurred in its value yesterday—The prices of Fo-
reign Stock are is follow :
French * Five per Cent. Dividend from 22d Sept., 92 50.
Spanish * Five per Cents. of 1820, Dividend from -Ist -May,
691. i i i i•
Ditto 1 ive per Cent. Bonds of 1821 (sterling), Dividend from
Ist May, 65k.
Russian * Six per Cents. Dividend from IstJuly. 82.
Ditto * Five per Cents. (metall.) Diva from Ist Sept., ff.
Ditto New Five per Cent. (metal].) Dividend from Ist Sept.
J37E i.
Prussian Five per Cent. Bonds of 1018 (sterling) Dividend
from Ist April, 91.

Ditto of 1822 (sterling) Dividend from Ist July, 88i 1.
Austrian * Five per Cents. (metall.) Div. from Ist Feb. 81.
N eapolitan * Five per Cent. Bonds, Dividend from lstJuly,
i7}
D
anish Five per Cent. Bonds (sterling) Div. from Ist July,
89.
* Ditto Banco Marks, Dividend from Ist July, 86k.
Colombian Six per Cent. Bonds (sterling) Dividend from Ist
May, 86g.
Chilien Six per Cent. Bonds (sterling) Dividend from lst
April, 84i 5.
Marked * are subject to the rate of Exchange.
—( Morning Chronicle.)