A letter to Benjamin Rotch, Esq., chairman of the committee of visitors; on the plan and government of the additional lunatic asylum for the County of Middlesex, about to be erected at Colney Hatch / by John Conolly.

Date:
1847
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A letter to Benjamin Rotch, Esq., chairman of the committee of visitors; on the plan and government of the additional lunatic asylum for the County of Middlesex, about to be erected at Colney Hatch / by John Conolly. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    cisc situation relative to the whole plan, arid overlook the same airing-courts or grounds. “ In all cases,” say the Commissioners in their directions, “ the aged, dirty, infirm, and epileptic patients should be accommodated on the ground- floor, and violent and noisy patients should be as far removed as possible from the other patients, and in rooms appropriated to their exclusive use.” This direction cannot be complied with in a building of three stories. The tranquil must be disturbed by the noisy, and the decent offended by the duty. There can be no perfect classification either within doors or without. And the crowding together of a greater number of patients within a given space in an asylum so arranged, renders it still more difficult to maintain so perfect a system of ventilation as is required to pre- serve the patients, attendants, and officers in a state of health. The Commissioners will, I imagine, scarcely sanction what is so inconsistent with so much that their visits to asylums have taught them the ne- cessity for. Wherever there is a ward on a third story, that ward is liable to be neglected. It is in vain to deny this. Everybody in an asylum knows it to be true. The ward is out of the way, and the additional stairs add much to the fatigue of all whose duty it is to superintend every part of the building. This is the case even where there is only a third story here and there; but a third story all over an asylum cannot be neglected; and for the officers to inspect such an asylum “ without retracing their steps” (another point recommended by the Commissioners), is impossible: and yet this is a trifling consideration compared with that of the difficulty of conveying food,