State of the Lincoln Lunatic Asylum (instituted November 4, 1819) : [seventeenth report].

  • Lincoln Lunatic Asylum (Lincoln, England)
Date:
1841
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: State of the Lincoln Lunatic Asylum (instituted November 4, 1819) : [seventeenth report]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    bounds; governing, in short, less by the arms and the legs, and more by the brain. This will not be allowed without a struggle. It would be ruinous to the lunatic housekeeper; the present system only ruins the patients. “ That the unfortunate author of this work was a most troublesome inmate we learn from his own pages ; and that, considering his great restlessness and activity;, he w7as for the most part treated w'ith consideration and forbearance. Yet the description he gives of his being fastened in a sort of restraint-chair [*] every day, with no amusement but to rub and flatten his nose against the wall; and his account of the manner in which he was forced into the bath, and occasionally corrected for his strange fancies, sufficiently shew that the treatment was extremely defective. Medicine might be given, and proper food, but cheerful recreative exercise seems to have been much neglected, and the closest and most miserable form of complicated restraint, (sitting in a restraint-chair in a strait-waistcoat, and the feet fastened to the floor,) resorted to for a period, which no circumstances could render necessary, or even justify. He seems also to have worn the strait- waistcoat in bed, and to have had his hands strapped to the sides of the bedstead, and his feet fastened to the bottom of it. This is in fact, or was, an ordinary method of restraint in old institutions; very convenient to keepers and nurses, but often utterly destructive to the patient. 4 Fastened thus, lying on my back, I passed my wretched sleepless nights for nearly, if not quite, nine months !5 We do not hesitate to state our belief that there never was a case which required this treatment: never was a case in which it would not be mischievous. 4 I had not exercise enough during the day to procure sleep, but I lay exhausted, wearied, agonied, terrified in my spirits, hungering after rest, but unable to procure it.5 Most true, and terrible, and instructive commentary ! No doubt the humane head of the establishment would have put an end to this, if he had not been misinformed. “ We are by many things convinced that an important era in the management of insanity is at hand. Pinel struck off the chains from all the lunatics in the Bicetre, in the period of the French Revolution ; but the example was well-nigh lost. Tuke, with no less moral courage, established an institution at York, on principles of the purest humanity, and opposed to every prejudice then prevalent and powerful. Beams of accidental light then broke in on Bethlem; and rivetted fetters fell off*—were even struck off* by woman’s hands, to be imposed no more. The occupation of lunatics in various works mentioned, and partly put in practice, by Pinel, adopted in Germany, and forcibly recommended by Tuke, was tried to a great extent at Wakefield, and subsequently at Hanwell by the late Sir William Ellis. A great diminution of restraints took place at Nottingham and in other [ * At page 118 of the Review, the following graphic picture of a Restraint-chair occurs. ‘‘Who would think that this elegant contrivance was a large deal watch-box, pierced as a close-stool, in and upon which the patient was placed in the morning to remain there till evening, secured in the chair by straps passed through holes in the back of the chair and locked! Rows of these were once to be seen in most asylums.”]