Extract from the ninth annual report of the State Board of Charities of the State of New York, relating to hospitals for the sick and insane / by M.B. Anderson, J.C. Devereux ; to which is appended a report relating to the management of the insane in Great Britain by H.B. Wilbur.

  • Anderson, M. B. (Martin B)
Date:
1876
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Extract from the ninth annual report of the State Board of Charities of the State of New York, relating to hospitals for the sick and insane / by M.B. Anderson, J.C. Devereux ; to which is appended a report relating to the management of the insane in Great Britain by H.B. Wilbur. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    who would administer this great system of charity and science with the greatest ease and effect, and to those who should enjoy every facility of restoration, if they are curable, and every means of diminishing their morbid excitability and distress, and of lessening the burden of their disease, if they cannot be restored.” His paper was discussed in the American Association of Superin¬ tendents of Insane Asylums. It was conceded, that in American asylums, but little account, comparatively, was made of employment of the patients. The main reason assigned wTas, that patients in this country were reluctant to labor. One member, however, made the wise suggestion that if occupation were so essential in the management and treatment of the insane, as English experience would seem to show, was it not the duty of those in charge of such institutions in America to enforce it, even if patients were unwilling. But unwilling¬ ness to work is not confined to the insane in America, as will be seen by the following extract from the Tenth Annual Report of the Argyll and Bute Asylum; says Dr. Rutherford, its able superintend¬ ent : “ An aversion to regular, well-directed industry is a character¬ istic of chronic insanity; and in this institution, to combat the ten¬ dency to idleness, or to do only such things as are in accordance with the disordered fancy, is a leading principle of treatment. To see chronic lunatics, strong and in the prime of life, strolling about all day in pleasure grounds, each indulging in his own morbid thoughts, is, as may be imagined, a painful and depressing spectacle. Mere walking exercise, be it ever so regularly taken, has very little influence in counteracting these morbid manifestations.” In another place he adds: “No difficulty is experienced with new cases coming into the asylum; they fall at once into the system already in force; more difficulty is experienced with those transferred from other asylums, where they have acquired habits of idleness.” Again it is alleged that the common people of Great Britain are naturally more subservient to authority than Americans; that they carry this over into insanity, and so are more obedient to the command to labor. It may be reasonably doubted whether, in modern times, outside the army and navy, subordination is a special characteristic of British subjects; but any such difference in submissiveness to authority, if it were a fact, is more than counterbalanced by the superior versa¬ tility of the American laborer or artisan in the matter of employments. Another reason was, that work-shops had been tried in this country and proved a pecuniary failure. However, the brevity of the reported unsuccessful experiments was, perhaps, a sufficient cause for the assumed failure; more probably, the experiments failed, as all half¬ hearted measures will, through difficulties and obstacles not resolutely faced. At all events, as financial results are only the smallest aim of v.