Sixteenth annual medical report : for the year 1861-62, ending July 4th presented to the Committee of Visitors, August 2nd, 1862 and to the Court of General Sessions, October, 1862 / Kent Lunatic Asylum, Barming Heath, Maidstone.

  • Kent County Lunatic Asylum.
Date:
1862
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Sixteenth annual medical report : for the year 1861-62, ending July 4th presented to the Committee of Visitors, August 2nd, 1862 and to the Court of General Sessions, October, 1862 / Kent Lunatic Asylum, Barming Heath, Maidstone. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    « It would not be right to blame Committees of Visitors for these acci- “ dents until after it should have been shown that they had controlled “ their Medical Officers in such a way as to deprive them of their profes- “ fessional discretion.—I am, &c., “Jan. 13, 1862. “ J. E. H.” Surely, the above case affords a most lamentable example; and to think that it really happens, mediately, through the striving of the Commis¬ sioners to supplant all other discretion with their own is alarming, since the field of their operations is the Kingdom and embraces all County Asylums. It would seem that we have no sooner got completely rid of the old system of gross and unnecessary oppression of insane persons under con¬ finement, than we are introduced to and invited, nay, pertinaciously urged to receive with favor, a new tyranny, put forward, like a wolf in sheep’s clothing, in the philanthropic dress of the time. Thus, we have a system of waking and disturbing patients from their sleep offered to us as “ night nursingand we are urged to incessantly meddle with our patients who are following inclinations harmless in themselves, merely to please our- selves and make appearances gratifying to us. We are not asked to consider how far sleep maybe interrupted, for a secondary object, without detriment to our invalids, in view of an end acceptable in itself if it were attainable consistently with a higher duty and aim. In short, we are to treat our patients not so much like human beings to be cared for and cured, as like objectionable animals all whose unseemly ways may be put down by force and suppressed. It might, however, reasonably have been supposed that the abolition of the system of material personal restraint would have cleared the ground for true medical treatment; and that the spirit of a properly informed professional intelligence would have governed every fresh project (whencesoever proceeding), for the better management of the insane. In the hands alone of medical officers enjoying (as, in¬ deed, they universally do) the well-merited confidence of their Committees, this principle would ever be held in view. If the well-being of the Lu¬ natic and progress in the knowledge of his disease are to be the first objects, these officers must be uncontrolled from without and not pestered with fanciful suggestions. The Medical Officers know the necessity there is for restraining their own desires in coping with the difficulties incidental to the malady—a necessity imposed by a benevolent sense uninfluenced by the poor desire of exercising power—so that every act and arrangement, everything done or left unattempted shall answer to a comprehensive intelligence, pervad¬ ing the entire system of treatment.