Eighteenth report of the directors of the Dundee Lunatic Asylum, for the year ending 31st May, 1838.

  • Dundee Lunatic Asylum.
Date:
[1838?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Eighteenth report of the directors of the Dundee Lunatic Asylum, for the year ending 31st May, 1838. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    6 EIGHTEENTH REPORT OF THE DIRECTORS OF THE DUNDEE LUNATIC ASYLUM, For the Year ending 31s£ May, 1838. The Directors have two objects in view in coming before the public with the Annual Report. Being elected to their office by the suffrages of others, they feel the obligation of giving to their constituents an account of the manner in which they have discharged the trust reposed in them, and also of keeping alive in the public mind a feeling of inte¬ rest towards a most useful and benevolent Institution. It will be admitted that insanity is the heaviest evil incident to our nature ; and the lunatic, being in the most hapless condition in which man appears in his present state of ex¬ istence, has the most urgent claim to the sympathy of his brethren. Is man distinguished among the works of God in being the child of reason ? How degraded is his con¬ dition when reason is clouded, when he is seen raging like a beast of prey, bound in chains that he may neither injure himself or others ? Is his condition less pitiable when his spirit sinks, when his ear will not listen to the sound of comfort, when the voice of kindred or of friendship excites only emotions of anger or sadness—when imaginary phan¬ toms float before his mind-—or lost to every hope of mercy, he is anticipating the misery of the eternal world ? As we know but little of the operations of mind, and cannot dis¬ cern the mysterious link that connects it with our corpo-