The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1896-09-10
FOR THE INSANE.
What a Prominent Physician Says
About Accommodations in Honolulu.
Quiet Hospital What is Needed for Proper
Treatment-Present Methods do Not
Improve Condition of People.

A prominent physician stopped re-
porter of this paper on the street yes
terday and began to talk about insane
people and accommodations for the
same in the following language:
Il am well aware that money is a
hard thing to get nowadays and that
improvements throughout the city and
islands are not as easily accomplished
as perhaps some of our legislators
think, but to tell you the truth l would
rather see some of our streets go for
years without repair and some of our
country roads remain in the brains of
those who are clamoring for them and
use the money necessary for such
things for the building of a kind of
a hospital in some place near the city
for people showing the first signs of
insanity. 1 will give you my reasons
for this.
"As you know l have had experience
with various forms of insanity and
should be able to know something of
what l am saying.
What is done with a person in Ho-
nolulu when first suspected of being
insane? Is he handled carefully and
taken to some quiet place with every
thing about calculated to soothe? Is
he given to understand that he is in
place where kind hearts and hands
will minister to his wants? You know
that such is not the case He is taken
to the police station with all it's asso-
Citations to a place where muir
derers and thieves are huddled togeth-
er. Are any pains taken to conceal
from him the fact that he is in the
police station? He looks around him
and finds rough faces looking at him
he is placed in cell and locked in
like criminal; an officer is placed as a
guard upon his movements. Is ali
this calculated to do an insane person
any good? No, thousand times. He
Is simply made worse and any addition
al excitement of the kind at a stage
when insanity is just beginning goes
a very long way toward bringing on a.
stronger degree.
But that is not the worst of it,
Take it for granted that after an ex-
of a suspect in the district
court and by the physician, he is sent
to the insane asylum, he must needs be
thrown together with other insane peo-
pie and, if his case is not a very bad
one, might be set stark starving mad
just simply by the associations of the
place. Now, in the name of common
sense, is this right when you stop to
think of it?
Here, we will say, are lot of I'M
just a little bit off. They
are easily excited. Make them face
the above circumstances. which by the
way is happening day after day, and
IS their condition improved? Manifest
ly not. 1 do not hesitate to say that
l believe many a poor life has been
simply ruined by the system in vogue
here. Perhaps people generally do not
think of these things and 1 hope for
that reason that you will publish my
at your earliest convenience
Nov then, what is wanted? Simply
a little quiet hospital where people
suspected of insanity can be taken
a place free from all constraint, COM
and like private home. Here
they can remain where the physician
in charge can examine them from day
to day and learn all the circumstances
in their respective cases. If there is
any cure to be effected it can claim
better results here than in the atmos-
phere of the insane asylum