The present state and prospects of psychological medicine : with suggestions for improving the laws relating to the care and treatment of lunatics / by Joseph Seaton.

  • Seaton, Joseph.
Date:
1853
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The present state and prospects of psychological medicine : with suggestions for improving the laws relating to the care and treatment of lunatics / by Joseph Seaton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    6 general prejudice is well-founded, and if just cause for odium be found to exist, then to inquire whether that odium is made to fall on the right head. That cruelties and villanies of all sorts have been perpe- trated in Lunatic Asylums, is a fact established upon evi- dence too strong to leave room for doubt;—^regardless of every dictate of humanity and tie of blood, the lunatic has been consigned to hopeless and perpetual imprisonment, un- cared for, and, perhaps, unseen for months or years! And by whom ?—by his nearest relative—his father, mother, brother, sister, wife;—to be released at last only by the great liberator—Death ! Possibly during his confinement he may never have re- covered the use of his intellect; but, alas, there is another possibility, almost too feai'ful to contemplate,—the light of reason may once more have burst upon him, and dispersed the clouds which enshrouded his faculties in worse than noc- turnal darkness, awaking him—but not to liberty. The World believes not in the curability of Insanity, therefore his igno- rant keeper, and his fear-struck and not less ignorant relatives, if they took cognizance of it at all, quickly satisfied them- selves that his recovery was, at best, but a lucid interval; possibly only an effort of insane cunningand then, per- haps, driven frantic by the hopelessness of his position, his lun of reason set, never again to rise; confirming, as they believe, the soundness of their judgments, and affording to theniy another proof of the incurability of insanity ! All this may have happened, and no greater crime be chargeable upon keeper or relative than ignorance and fear. But we know that in some instances far less innocent