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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    ADDRESS.* Of all the subjects legitimately belonging to the specialty of psychiatry, or immediately connected with it, no one has, for the last few years, occupied a more prominent position in the United States, or called forth a larger number of words, oral, written and printed, than the proper provision for the custody, care and cure of the insane. In venturing to contribute another rivulet to this verbal Niagara, I do not profess to be able to say any- thing new; and my only attempted excuse shall be that I speak to an association which, whether it be re- garded collectively or, with some exceptions, individu- ally, does not stand in the bed of the stream of that which has been written, but, dwelling upon the plains of the bordeiing shores, has caught only the dewy droppings.of the mist ascending from the torrent. Let us hope that those dews have been refreshing, and that some eye, more fortunate than others, has detected a rainbow extending its arc of beauty, of hope, and of promise above the somewhat turbulent waters. In this country during the quarter of a century next preceding the year 1855, or thereabouts, it appeared to be universally recognized as, in practice, a principle, and in theory, a postulate having all the self-evidence and the force of an axiom, that, for the proper treatment of the insane, the first measure is to collect them in hospitals adequately supplied with all the munitions which can * Read, by request, before the Massachusetts Medical Society, at the anniversary meeting, in Boston, June 2, 1868.