Annual report of the Royal Edinburgh Asylum for the insane. 1885.

  • Royal Edinburgh Asylum.
Date:
[1886]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Annual report of the Royal Edinburgh Asylum for the insane. 1885. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    27/76 (page 23)
    I have naturally, in view of this building, been devoting a good deal of attention to the principles of the construction of hospitals for the better class insane of late years. And a request in 1878 from the State Board of Health of Massachusetts to furnish it with plans for such an hospital was the means of my collecting a good deal of information on the subject, and putting that informa¬ tion and my own ideas on the matter into definite shape. I should like, however, to take a run soon into England, and see the latest hospital buildings and arrangements there. After that I should be able to give a Report to the Managers and Medical Board, embracing the general principles I would advocate for the proposed building. In so far as these were approved by these bodies, and with the improvements suggested by them, the next step would be to lay our general scheme before the Commissioners in Lunacy for their aid, advice, and approval. Then we should need the services of a competent architect to put our scheme into still more definite shape, for still further criticism and revisal. With the questions of architectural style, &c. settled, the work would then be ready to be carried out. I would advocate the buildings being put up gradually over four or five years, thus using up our surplus revenue from the East House as it came in, and not going much further into debt. Building has never of late years been cheaper than it is now, so that there is a strong induce¬ ment not to delay too long in beginning. The following are some of the preliminary considerations to be determined :—1. We must limit the building to the right size for individualization of the patients, not being tempted to go over this for the sake of a larger money surplus. 2. We must try and attain as close a combination of the hospital idea for cure, and the home idea for comfort, as possible. Our primary object is to cure disease. Nothing else will avail, if we do not provide the best means of doing this. If we are not a Medical institution, we are nothing. But inasmuch as the cure of mental disease, and its alleviation, if not curable, are greatly aided by placing the patients in comfortable homedike surroundings, these must be secured. As I called my Massachusetts plan in 1878, we must make ours a true “ Hospital-Home.” 3. Our building should by its very ap- Steps to be taken Preliminary Re¬ port on General Principles of Construction. Build in detach¬ ments. Things to be settled. Right size. We want an “ Hospital- Home.”