Twenty-third annual report of the Belfast District Hospital for the insane of the counties of Antrim and Down, and the county of the town of Carrickfergus : from the 1st April, 1852, to the 31st March, 1853.

  • Belfast District Hospital for the Insane.
Date:
1853
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Twenty-third annual report of the Belfast District Hospital for the insane of the counties of Antrim and Down, and the county of the town of Carrickfergus : from the 1st April, 1852, to the 31st March, 1853. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    ‘ In England or Scotland, or in any other localities where perhaps the services of a single Chaplain might suffice, if such an appointment were productive of no positive good, it might be justly considered as at least a harmless, if not an interesting experiment; but in Ireland, and more especially in our part of it, and above all in Belfast, from the reason just adduced, I cannot but consider the experiment a most rash one, and to be deprecated by all who have the interests of the unhappy class of our fellow-creatures under consideration sincerely at heart. (Signed) ‘ William M‘Ilwaine, A.M., * Incumbent of St. George’s, Belfast.’ ” “ Extract from a Review on Insanity and Hospitals for the Insane, published in The Dublin Quarterly Journal of Medical Science, November 1851, conducted by the distinguished Dr. Neligan : — ‘We quite agree with Dr. Kirkman and Dr. Cheyne, in this view of Hie matter, and feel called upon here to state our belief that it is one of the monomanias of the present day, the extremes to which the exercise of religion is carried professionally in our Lunatic Institutions. One, or at the utmost two, discreet and judicious official Chaplains, to administer spiritual comfort and advice in those cases deemed by the Resident Me¬ dical Superintendent not likely to be prejudiced, may perhaps be right and proper; but in Institutions where there are several entirely different religious denominations, all of whom would necessarily require a distinct Chaplain—three or four, perhaps, according to the particular locality—we esteem that it would be a positive evil, and more likely to injure than serve the patients. ‘The very fact of three or four different kinds of religious services being performed each Sunday by three or four different Clergymen, under the one roof, would, in a common sense view of tho matter, be calculated to cause no small excitement, even among the sane; to say nothing of that community being composed of insane individuals, and the Sunday, instead of being a day of rest, would, under such circumstances, become one of more than ordinary disquietude.’ “ And again from the same Journal, on the same subject, in November, 1852:—. ‘ Professional religious instruction in a Lunatic Asylum is a qucestio vexta not confined to Ireland alone, where there are so many angry ele¬ ments owing to difference of creed, to cause strife and contention by the multiplication of Chaplains; but in England also, with but one form of