Report on insanity and idiocy in Massachusetts.

  • Massachusetts. Commission on Lunacy. [from old catalog].
Date:
1855
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report on insanity and idiocy in Massachusetts. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the University of Massachusetts Medical School, Lamar Soutter Library, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Lamar Soutter Library at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.

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    physician in the State, asking each one to give information relative to the persons and condition of all the lunatics and idiots within his own knowledge. They sent a lithograph let- ter, stating the several objects of inquiry, and enclosed a printed schedule or form of return, which contained all the heads under which the answers were to be recorded. They asked for the name, sex, color, age, country of birth, whether single, married or widowed, whether lunatic or idiot, present and usual condi- tion, whether mild, manageable, troublesome, excitable, furious or dangerous, whether subject for a hospital or not, length of disease, if periodical the number of attacks, whether curable or not, whether the remedial influences of any hospital had ever been tried for restoration, where resident if not in the town of the reporter, and whether State or town pauper, or independ- ent. It was supposed that these fifteen questions would elicit all the information which the Legislature required, all that science would desire, and all that could be conveniently obtained from those of whom the inquiry was made. Although every family was presumed to come under the cognizance of some physician, as most families have one, who attends them in their sickness, yet there are some whose vari- ous members employ two or more physicians to heal them. Each of these might observe and return the same lunatic or idiot member of the family, who would thus be reported more than once. Therefore the names were asked to enable the Com- missioners to correct any mistake that might arise from this double or multiplied reporting. In course of the inquiry this has happened in many instances. With a view of this liability, the several reports from the same towns have always been compared, and the error of counting the same person more than once prevented. To save the feelings of patients or friends who would be pained if their individual cases were told abroad, and to save the physicians from any violation of implied professional con- fidence, a pledge was given that none but the Commission should see the names of the persons reported. And in fulfil- ment of this promise, after the reports were compared and corrections made for the duplications, the names were erased.