The philosophy of insanity / by the late inmate of the Glasgow Royal Asylum for Lunatics at Gartnavel [ i. e. Frame]; with an introduction by Frieda Fromm-Reichmann.

  • Frame.
Date:
1860
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The philosophy of insanity / by the late inmate of the Glasgow Royal Asylum for Lunatics at Gartnavel [ i. e. Frame]; with an introduction by Frieda Fromm-Reichmann. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

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    an insane person; but ignorance, with the most upright and merci- ful intentions, may work irremediable mischief. In some stages of this disease it matters little what sort of moral supervision they are under; in other stages it is a matter of most vital importance. Ex- perience gathered from common every-day life is not to be depended upon in the treatment of the insane. An old illustration of this, with which I was intimately connected, looms before my mind’s eye with all the freshness of yesterday upon it. The mind of a person of a most nervous and energetic tempera- ment, on account of some disagreeable circumstances connected with his family, got a little disordered, and as the diseased mind instinctively looks always around it for some keener instrument of torture than the one from which it suffers, he, as thousands have done before, and thousands will likely do after, pitched upon some woe-denouncing passages in the Old Testament, and imagined that the curses had been specially manufactured for the purpose of being launched at him. In this state of mind he had not the power— it was an impossibility for him to draw consolation even from the promises so plentifully bestrewed through the pages of the New Testament, for even they were to all intents negative curses, for they applied not to him. Common sense might have taught any one that the entire book ought to have been kept out of his way. His wife thought otherwise, and whoever would have opposed her would have risked the awful charge of attempting to destroy the man’s soul. The man’s agony went on till the mind, or the brain, if it be a more suitable word, died before the body, and lay an insensate mass within that dome, where it might have lived and reigned For seventeen years I have been in communication with insanity, and for a long time I have been deeply impressed with the idea, that could this disease be rendered more familiar, and of course less repulsive to the public mind, its chance of being checked and subdued in the first stage would be much greater. People hide it till it gathers strength, and the first public notice is sometimes written in the victim’s blood. The fear of a lunatic asylum, has been the means of supplying asylums with many a nervous, week- minded tenant. In the hope of so far dissipating this dread, and freeing the bright spirit of hope from the talons of that dark demon despair, in the bosoms of those mentally afflicted, I have written this little