Total abolition of personal restraint in the treatment of the insane. A lecture on the management of lunatic asylums, and the treatment of the insane; delivered at the Mechanics' Institution, Lincoln, on the 21st of June, 1838; with statistical tables, ... / by Robert Gardiner Hill.

Date:
[1839]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Total abolition of personal restraint in the treatment of the insane. A lecture on the management of lunatic asylums, and the treatment of the insane; delivered at the Mechanics' Institution, Lincoln, on the 21st of June, 1838; with statistical tables, ... / by Robert Gardiner Hill. 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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    deviation from which is never overlooked by the Board) a pecuniary allowance has been made to all members of the establishment in lieu of malt liquor. A further review of the instruments of restraint has reduced them to four simple methods :—viz. Day, 1.—The wrists secured by a flexible connection with a belt round the waist. 2.—The ancles secured by a flexible connection with each other, so as to allow of walking exercise. Night, 3.—One or both wrists attached by a flexible con- nection to the side of the bed. 4.—The feet placed in night-shoes, similarly at- tached to the foot of the bed. Both the precautions together are very seldom required in the same case, either by day or by night: Strong dresses which cannot readily be torn, and List shoes, generally super- seding the necessity of any restraint even in excited cases. The object of restraint is not punishment but security. Every instrument which could confine the fingers them- selves has been entirely discarded, for reasons founded upon a distinction between restraints which render a patient harm- less, and those which would render him unable to employ the remains of his reason to assist himself on proper occasions. The present suffering and future ill consequences result- ing from the neglect of this distinction, have been forcibly depicted in the evidence* given by Mr. John Haslam, * Question.—How are the hands secured [in Bcthlem] ? With chains ? Answer.—A manacle is a means of confining the wrists, leaving the fingers at liberty, but rendering them incapable of separating their arms for the purposes of effecting violence. Q Might not violence be effected by both the hands? A No, you cannot be afraid of any man so secured.