Twenty-second annual report of the Suffolk Lunatic Asylum : December, 1859.

  • Suffolk Lunatic Asylum.
Date:
[1860]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Twenty-second annual report of the Suffolk Lunatic Asylum : December, 1859. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    slays of ample experience, it is not to be wondered at, that occasionally actual insanity was exposed thirty years ago, to that treatment which resulted from the boldness of ignorance. Our early case-book contains some illustrative examples to which it may at some future period be desirable to refer. The first object of the present Superintendent on his ap¬ pointment in 1831 was to domesticate the household, and to obtain by continued intercourse and identity of feeling that control which the law of reciprocity imperatively demands. He found that by speaking truth always, even in some in¬ stances unpalatable truth, he was trusted; and he endeavoured to establish that basis from which alone moral good can arise. The danger of deceit has in the course of years been acknow¬ ledged, and exposed. Reference has again and again been, made to this custom in earlier reports, and it cannot be too frequently repeated or too constantly brought under the notice of all connected with the removal of patients to the Asylum, that mistrust is engendered which acts most un¬ favourably upon the patient, upon the knowledge which he is sure to obtain of his having been the subject of falsehood or deceit. He is very slow to trust the word of any body after this discovery. We are aware that Paley in his Moral Philosophy, affirms it to be morally right to tell a lie to a madman.* Our view however has refeience rathei to the treatment as erroneous than to the falsehood as immoial. * Paley s Moral Philosophy.—Book 3. chap. 15. On Lies. a There are falsehoods which are not lies; that is, which are not criminal, as,— 2, Where the person to whom you speak, has no right to know the truth ; or, more properly, where little or no inconveniency results from the want of confidence in such cases ; as where you tell a falsehood to a madman for his own advantage; to a robber, to conceal your property; to an assassin, to defeat or divert him from his purpose. 1 he particular consequence is, by the supposition, beneficial; and, as to the general con¬ sequence, the worst that can happen is, that the madman, the robber, the assassin, will not trust you again; which (beside that the first is incapable of deducing regular conclusions from having been once deceived, and the last two not likely to come a second time in your way) is sufficiently com¬ pensated by the immediate benefit which you propose by the falsehood.