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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    chial asylum. It will accommodate 400 patients, but the administra¬ tive buildings are designed for a much larger number, as there are to be extensions of its capacity on the cottage system. It is to be under the superintendency of Dr. Rutherford, who, by his admirable manage¬ ment of the Argyle and Bute asylum, has made that institution the pet institution (as I heard it expressed) of the commissioners of lunacy. Many of the features of the new asylum are the result of his opinions and suggestions. It is simply complete in all its arrangements and appointments. In its domestic arrangements it embodies every modern contrivance for convenient or economical administration, and British art in that direction is in advance of the world, it would seem to me. It has a chapel with stained-glass windows. It has an amusement hall of fine proportions and stage appointments. Its dining hall is all, that could be desired. Though the building is but two stories at the highest, and covers a large ground surface, its various parts are so connected by covered ways, that each are within easy reach of the others, or of the general places of assembly. The Work shops and the laundry are admirably arranged for the employment of the patients. There are a few strong rooms in each department for the seclusion of excited and refractory patients, and then all other arrangements are like those of any well-ordered hospital for the treatment of disease. There were no spring-locks on any doors in the house. The win¬ dows were like those in an ordinary house and without guards. The furniture was in no way peculiar, except that the table ware was quite elegant. There were no airing-courts. The main front of the build¬ ing, and that the patients’ front, looked out upon what, when finished, were to be ornamental grounds; and these bounded by an open iron fence, on the other side of which runs a railroad of immense passenger traffic; perhaps 20,000 passengers a day. In fact, such is the faith of Dr. Rutherford in the effect of employment in tranquilizing the patients, that he may be said to court observation of the grounds where his most refractory patients take their exercise. Dr. Fraser, of the Fife & Kinross asylum, had expressed an opinion, that perhaps the great amount of freedom he allowed his patients might not be practicable except in asylums of moderate size -— say with 250 patients — and. not in too close proximity to a large city. But Dr. Rutherford had no doubts of success, with open wards even with a much larger number. All he asked was abundance of land for out¬ door work and well arranged work-shops. In some tables in the appendix of this report, the percentage of em¬ ployment of patients, in some of the leading asylums in Scotland, may be seen. Even the lunatic wards of poor-houses furnish no exception X