Thirty-second annual report of the Suffolk Lunatic Asylum : December, 1869.

  • Suffolk Lunatic Asylum.
Date:
[1870]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Thirty-second annual report of the Suffolk Lunatic Asylum : December, 1869. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    REPORT. A very slight perusal of the past records of the Asylum will be sufficient to shew by what gradually progressive steps its present position has been obtained; and it is some satis¬ faction for the Superintendent to look back to his earliest efforts, with the conviction that the experience of later years only tends to confirm those opinions which were originally held. The want of that imposing appearance which some of the new asylums may well be proud of, has been met by those internal comforts which have characterised this Asylum as a domestic home. Some of the asylums are of an attractive character, purposely built so, that patients of a higher class might be received, whose different rates of payment would tend to diminish the County Pauper charge. A late super¬ intendent of one of these decorative buildings said that it was considered stock-in-trade. It will hardly be necessary to refer again to the early abolition of personal restraint: this has been slightly recog¬ nized by Sir James Clarke in his life of Dr. Conolly. While there is no desire to o’erstep that modesty to which a repeated reference to this subject might lead, and without any disposition to engage as a struggling claimant for priority, it may be allowable to suggest that lesser efforts should not be ignored altogether because they are not