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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    of acting on this recommendation, whieli is that of gentlemen who have never lived in asylums, and have consequently no experience of the cases requiring separate accommodation at night, or of the great in- conveniences arising from the want of it, you will take the opinions of medical men who have lived in asylums, or who now live in asylums, and know then- state by night as well as by day. If you do not find them unanimous on this subject, I think you will find that then want of unanimity arises from certain differences respecting important parts of the treatment of the insane, which are in the highest degree worthy of your consideration. I presume it to be your wish, and that of the whole of your Committee, that the new building should offer every facility for the most improved modern treatment of the insane. With the small number of separate sleeping-rooms which you propose that the new Asylum shall contain, you must at once exclude and render impossible some valuable parts of that treatment. The classification of yom- patients must inevitably be defective, the proper ventilation of the sleeping-rooms impracticable, and the safety of several of the patients constantly endangered. The classification will become almost wholly dependent on the circumstance of certain patients being tranquil in the night, however differing in character, occupation, and habits during the day. Not having a sufficient number of separate sleeping-rooms for the dirty, or for the violent, many of the dirty patients must, of course, be placed together in dormitories, which their habits will render con- stantly offensive, and productive of an atmosphere at all times unfavorable to the health of all the patients in the Asylum.