Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1870-05-31
Treatment of the Insane.
Iron the New York Tribune.l

From the New York Tribune.
Our English exchanges come to u:
filled with indignant attacks upon
the present system of treatment ia
use in their insane asylums. Two
keepers of the county mad house al
Lancaster have just been sentenced
to seven years penal servitude for
the murder of one William Wilson
who was admitted to the asylum on
Dec. IL, and in less than week was
pummeled and kneaded to death, his
ribs being literally broken into bits
by the knees of his attendants. The
Earl of Shaftesbury. head of the
Board of Commissioners in Lunacy,
calls attention to this, and to Sire
quent cases of like cruelty and neg
lect,' in the Times, but without sug-
costing any etfectual remedy. In
fact, as the English journals acknowl-
edge, there Is no remedy so long as
helpless idiots and lunatics are mass
ed together in large asylums, under
the absolute control of keeping over
whom the surveillance Of the law is
slight, and against whose cruelty in
such cases as this there is ordinarily
no evidence but that of the crazed
patients, whom fear will keep silent.
A strong feeling is growing up both
IN England and this country, against
these enormous Warehouses;, where,
as says the Examiner, human beings
are aggregated together to be treated
like wild beasts, or, under the mildest
treatment, to foster and breed insan-
ity by mere contact. The Lancet is
denounciDg, on medical grounds, the
modern monster asylums. The treat
ment now practiced in Scotland and
Belgium is strongly recommended
In this, "the patient is boarded in
the country, where he is furnished
with light employment and surround
ed by sane peoples; the fever of his
blood has here chance to cool, and
CLEANS of the lost light of reason to
gladden. bis troubled brain" This
system, we believe, has been used for
many years with great success in
Germany.
The matter deserves attention here
as well as in England We have
been so wont to regard the great
piles Of cut stone in which the insane
are imprisoned for cure, a. one Of the
great humanitarian tiiumphs Of the
age, that we trouble ourselves very
little bout what goes inside Of
them. So glaring has been the pub
lie negligence that it is only lately
we have awakened to the fact that
they could be and were used for con-
venient prisons for sane people
The Pennsylvania Legislature passed
a law regulating the admission into
mad houses last year, and from one
OF her most respectable asylums
eleven sane men were disgorged in
week, whose relatives had suppos-
ed they were comfortably slowed
away for life. No such law has been
introduced in New York. In the
very highest of these private asylums
the torture of the shower-bath,
straight jacket, and saddle are still
used bat worse than those, for these
are only prescribed by the supern-
tendents)is the fact that the patients
are under the almost absolute control
OF keepers who are almost invariably
selected from the lowest classes. In
the male wards strength is, perhaps
necessarily, the principal requisite in
the attendants who are ordinarily
stolid immigrants. Few women of
refinement and tenderness. unfortu-
nately, are willing 20 accept the place
OF keeper in a madhouse. The fact
is, therefore, perhaps unavoidable,
that the,men and omen thus thrown
in contact with the poor creatures
whe are hurt in soul and not in body
are those least fitted to understand
their needs and most apt to abuse by
cruelty the power intrusted to them.
Of all helpless creatures, the one who
most strongly calls for our protect
ion and skill and patience is he upon
whose vital part, the very life of his
life, darkness has fallen. If his leg
were broken we would give him care
full nursing, pure air, ease and COM
fort but when it is only his brain
that is diseased, we give him for
companion and keeper man whom
be probably would not employ as a
servant, and fling him, with his own
mania, into the company of four or
five hundred other maniacs, that they
may teach each other more reason
able views of life.
1t needs only visit to the best of
| our asylums, and a cool, unbiased
examination of it, according to the
| light of ordinary common sense, to
make US doubt the efficacy of all
Overgrown routine reforms. Men
(and much less women) will not be
made sane by platoons, according to
one vague, indiscriminate system
What is yet doubt with US is certain
ty in England. The call for a change
to the Scotch mode is loud and inn
perative We should profit by their
example so far at cast as to place
our public and private asylums under
strict legal surveillance. The latter
have long ceased to be charities, and
are joint stock concerns, which WELD
heavy dividends to their corporators.
Whether they are efficient or not in
their mode of cure perhaps concerns
those only who make use of them !;
but il is the duty of the public to
make such atrocities as that of Lam
caster impossible;in them. They are
not impossible now.
nN-A bin has been introduced in
the Connecticut Legislature, provid-
/ inc that 10 hen an intoxioatad naraon