A few notes on lunacy in France suggested by a recent visit to French asylums : read at the annual meeting of the Medico-Psychological Assoc., July 26, 1878 : also, the proceedings of the International Congress of Mental Medicine, Paris, August, 1878 / by D. Hack Tuke.

  • Tuke, Daniel Hack, 1827-1895.
Date:
[1878]
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A few notes on lunacy in France suggested by a recent visit to French asylums : read at the annual meeting of the Medico-Psychological Assoc., July 26, 1878 : also, the proceedings of the International Congress of Mental Medicine, Paris, August, 1878 / by D. Hack Tuke. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    My impression is, however, that it has more occasion to he itself taught by some of these. At the Salpetriere and Bicetre, a quarter of a century has certainly seen some change for the better in the number who are restrained, though this is still considerable. At the for- mer M. Voisin strongly contended in favour of the camisole, and appealing to one woman whether she disliked it, obtained the reply that she did not. I ventured to ask him whether, when he visited the asylums in England in 1874, he was not con- vinced of the superiority of the English method of treatment t* He said he was not; that, on the contrary, he believed that the patients in our asylums not only had their ribs broken much oftener than in France, but frequently got pneumonia from being allowed to throw their clothes ofE in the night. Be maintained, also, that he had found mechanical restraint employed in English asylums, and that, notably, in one of large size, where he had seen a patient in a seclusion-room “ fastened from head to foot like a sausage.’^ When I visited M. Billod’s admirable institution at Vau- cluse, I saw six men out of 48 refractory patients in cami- soles, of whom three were also in seclusion. Among the women there were four so secured, and I was informed that the average was four or five. As I am now only stating facts about restraint, this is not the place to speak of the many excellencies of this asylum. I hope to do so at a future time. Brierre de Boismont, now 80 years of age, who forms one of the few links remaining between Pinel and the present generation of medical psychologists, is not a convert to the non-restraint system, and says now what he has said before : —“ To go from one extreme to the other is to prepare for ourselves a bitter deception. Philanthropy,” he says, “ has in this way made itself ridiculous ; excess, in everything, is a fault. This is a maxim,” he adds, “ to which we cannot too strongly recall those who burn with love for the public good.” And yet it must be confessed that philanthropy, in spite of its seeming but generous excesses, has many a time removed abuses and inaugurated reforms which otherwise would never have been effected. M. Magnan strives hard at St. Anne’s (Paris), to limit the use of mechanical restraint within narrow bounds, and when I went round with him he severely reprimanded one of the attendants for having secured the legs of a male patient in addition to his arms.