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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    employment has been made a matter for unfavorable comment by the lunacy commissioners; as also the fact that seclusion and mechanical restraints were more frequently resorted to than was found necessary in many other asylums. They do not hesitate, however, to impute it in great measure to overcrowding, and the want of sufficient exercise or occupation. At my second visit, I spent the whole time at the East House, where are 70 pay-patients of the better class. The main building for their accommodation is more than 60 vears old. It was built on an old plan; corridors on one side of wings, and with single rooms for patients on the other. There were sitting-rooms attached where the patients also took their meals. In another wing were suites of rooms for patients of the wealthy class, with a drawing-room of some ele¬ gance, where the patients assembled in the evening or at other times. This building had just undergone a complete renovation. Tasteful decorations concealed the age of the older portions of the structure, and it was variously modified to meet advanced views of management. The old iron window guards and frames had given place to plate-glass windows with wooden sash, even to the third story. In the drawing¬ room in the second story, already mentioned, I noticed that all the windows opened to their full height. The patients in six small wards may be said to be under lock and key while indoors, but in the new wings of this building and in three or four cottages, the superintendent, Dr. Clouston and myself, went in and out without the use of a key. In these, also, the windows were like those of an ordinary house. I learned that these quarters are locked only at night. Each year a large house is taken at the sea-shore, where such patients as would be benefited by the change, are taken in companies to spend a short period. There is now no airing-court in this whole establishment. It should be mentioned, that in the opinion of Dr. Clouston, a superintendent of large experience, it would be well to have one or two airing-courts in an institution as large as this to meet the wants of a few cases. In the most refractory female wards I saw here a piano, as I believe was the case in every asylum visited in Scotland. Dr. Clouston expressed himself in favor of small-sized institutions, .and of individual treat¬ ment of the insane in distinction from class treatment. Any report of what is going on in Scotland, in the direction of greater freedom for the insane, greater assimilation to the conditions of treatment of ordinary disease and invalidism, would be inadequate that did not mention a new asylum just now completed a short distance from Glasgow. It is built by a large and wealthy corporation of that city, as a paro-