The curability of insanity and the individualized treatment of the insane / by John S. Butler.

  • Butler, John Simpkins, 1803-1890.
Date:
1887
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The curability of insanity and the individualized treatment of the insane / by John S. Butler. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    I asked. Because, said he, this continued rainy- weather has kept me in-doors for a fortnight. I am in your way, in your business rooms. I have worn out the hospitality of Mrs. Butler—up there, seeing that poor old fellow twirling his thumbs hour after hour ! day after day ! I can't stand it! D—n it, I shall be just like him ! My continued experience ever afterwards strengthened my convictions of the expediency and in- deed humanity of the segregation of the chronic insane from the recent and hopefully curable cases. I was compelled by this conviction to present this question to the consideration of the Association at the meeting at Pittsburg, in 1865. Individualized treatment is called for in insanity as imperatively as in the case of acute forms of other physi- cal disease. The form of treatment is different according as the practitioner is hopefully working for a cure in an acute case, or as in some chronic case of long standing, he is simply administering palliation and general care. The first requires his personal and persistent attention, the second may be treated in a general way and may be committed to others. I believe strictly recent insanity in very many cases, is radically curable under the prompt, persistent, and united use of medical and moral means. These, to be efhcient? demand individualized application, /. ^., that same im- mediate, close, and sharp personal service w^hich the gen- eral practitioner necessarily gives to the early stages of typhus, diphtheria, cholera, etc. This power, essential to the largest success, is limited, as in all individual efforts, by number. Applicable to the few, it cannot be extended