The psychology of insanity / by Bernard Hart.

  • Hart, Bernard, 1879-
Date:
1912
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The psychology of insanity / by Bernard Hart. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

    23/200 (page 7)
    Men covered with filth cowered in cells of stone, cold, damp, without air or light, and furnished with a straw bed that was rarely renewed, and which soon became infectious—frightful dens where we should scruple to lodge the vilest animals. The insane thrown into these receptacles were at the mercy of their attendants, and these attendants were convicts from prison. The unhappy patients were loaded with chains and bound like galley slaves. The revolting misery of the asylums of those days has been pictured by the hand of Hogarth; it can hardly be described in words. The first work of humanitarianism in the field of insanity stands to the credit of England. In the reform of St Luke's in London, towards the end of the eighteenth century, and the foundation of the Retreat in York, we meet with the first serious attempt to better the material circumstances of the lunatic. Dr Conolly at Han well abolished the chains which had been hitherto an essential feature of every asylum, and similar reforms were carried out in France under the leadership of Pinel and Esquirol. Since those days the humanitarian movement has made continuous progress, the right of the insane to be treated as human beings is now universally recognised, and the asylum of to-day has become a model of comfort and orderliness. This advance in the methods of administration and