Report ... for the year 1842 / By Thomas S. Kirkbride.

  • Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane
Date:
[1843]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report ... for the year 1842 / By Thomas S. Kirkbride. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    34/54 (page 32)
    tural arrangements —the furniture and fixtures of a hos- pital—the number and kind of persons employed—the minutest details in its regulations—every thing indeed, that can in any way affect the mind or the person of a patient, has some connexion with it. The free and systematic exercise of the muscles of the body, in the open air, is unquestionably, one of the most powerful means of overcoming that nervous irrita¬ bility which we constantly find among our patients,— of breaking up a train of morbid thought, or preventing the indulgence of vicious habits; all of which are often to be traced directly to sedentary pursuits in impure air, and an exercise of the mind totally disproportioned to that of the body. By these, a state of the system is often engendered, that no course of medication, without a total change of habits, can remove. These principles are carried out to as full an extent as the means in our power will permit, by encouraging moderate, but regular labor, on the farm, in the gar¬ den, or on some of the improvements of the grounds;— by engaging in some handicraft employment, under the care of our master mechanic, in the very commodious workshop wdthin the enclosure; or by some of the other means to be hereafter indicated. Much more labour has been done this year than pre¬ viously, and in no instance has any unpleasant result occurred with any of those, in whose hands all the neces¬ sary tools and implements wrnre placed without hesita¬ tion. Next in importance to these means, and available for a much larger number of those who enter this institu¬ tion, is regular daily exercise, by long walks in the country; always, if possible, for some definite object, as a view of fine scenery—the examination of some public work, or the inspection of a manufactory. Our