Prospective provision for the insane / by Pliny Earle.

  • Earle, Pliny, 1809-1892.
Date:
1868
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Prospective provision for the insane / by Pliny Earle. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    The only modification to this plan which I would now make, is, an extension of the limits of the number of patients to two hundred and fifty; and this is per- missible only because of the large proportion of incura- bles among the existing insane. So far as relates to character and extent, hospitals of this description are model institutions. The plan ap- pears to me the best of all plans. In no other way can the insane be so well and so effectively treated, their protection secured, their comfort assured, their general welfare promoted, their contentment approximated, and the greatest probability of their restoration attained. The superintendent can obtain a sufficiently thorough knowledge of the case of every patient. Inspection by him may be frequent. All the details of treatment, both medical and moral, may be known to him, and hence the greatest efficiency secured. All the labor of which the patients are capable may be obtained as easily as under any other plan, and a large part of it may be devoted to the care of the curables, the sick, and the excited, thus materially diminishing the neces- sity for paid employes. Any desertion of this plan of treating the insane appears to me to be a desertion of the jn'inciples of true Christian philanthropy and beneficence. There can be but one excuse for such abandonment, and that is, pecuniary expense, the rude touchstone to the severe test of which all schemes of benevolence and of human improvement are brought. Under one roof, and with one household organization, five hundred persons can be supported at a cheaper rate, per capita, than two hundred and fifty persons;—and hence five hundred it must be. This is the first departure from the true method, and this departure has abeady very generally been made in this country. It is the first step that