Report of the Committee of Visitors of the Lunatic Asylum for the North and East Ridings of Yorkshire : presented at the Epiphany quarter sessions for the respective ridings, 1855 together with the superintendent's eighth annual report, read at the Easter sessions, 1855 and an account of the receipts and payments to the end of the year, 1854 / North and East Ridings of Yorkshire Lunatic Asylum.

  • North and East Ridings of Yorkshire Lunatic Asylum.
Date:
1855
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report of the Committee of Visitors of the Lunatic Asylum for the North and East Ridings of Yorkshire : presented at the Epiphany quarter sessions for the respective ridings, 1855 together with the superintendent's eighth annual report, read at the Easter sessions, 1855 and an account of the receipts and payments to the end of the year, 1854 / North and East Ridings of Yorkshire Lunatic Asylum. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Proofs of the advantages of a harmonious agreement of pleasure, intellectual instruction and employment, are almost daily evidenced. Indeed no higher moral attainment can well be reached, for on it chiefly depend the health, contentment and gradual improvement of the disordered mental functions, together with the acquisition of knowledge which shall fit the recovered patient for entering on fresh and inspiriting engagements, and open out, too, new ways for diverting the attention of such whose condition of mind is less hopeful, and who can only be safe under the care and regulation of Officers familiar with their individual distractions of mind and singularity of habits. The hardships of the Crimean Army were no sooner known and an announcement made of their want of clothing, than the Female Patients offered to sit up all night to make flannel shirts, knit stockings, or do any thing else required. The readiness with which orders for these were executed, would have done credit to an out-fitting warehouse, and no small satisfaction was derived by them and the servants, when the bales were dispatched to the railway. Throughout the summer months the Male Patients have been in the habit,—yearly since the opening in 1847,— of getting up at sun-rise to mow and supply the numerous applicants from York and the neighbourhood, who come to buy vegetables and fruit, giving an air of freedom and business-like life to the Asylum and Grounds, which, combined with all the other busy scenes of the day, relieve the sorrows of the broken in heart, raise the hopes of the wavering, inspire the perplexed with confidence, reassure the hypochondriac, sober the exalted and extravagant, light up the dormant but not obliterated intelligence of the depressed and melancholy, and by their variety and change help to shed a wholesome and cheering influence over every body within bounds of the Establishment. The good effects accruing from the absence of dry routine and the ordinary solitude of Asylum management, are reflected too upon Society; who thereby learn somewhat of insanity and to comprehend the necessity for extended means for treating with success the dreadful loss of reason, as well as to regard the sufferers with less of awe and fear. I have so often dwelt upon the different forms the disorder assumes, the stern intent with which insanity plunges the victim into despair, and the fell resolve with which it finishes the wreck of all that dignifies man’s nature; on the sad consequences and baneful results experienced by relatives and friends, on the pining ruin it causes and on the rapidity with which each succeeding year adds to the already swollen lists of the demented, idiotic and maniacal; and likewise enlarged upon the hitherto uncontrolled sources of this formidable increase, embracing as they do, amongst