The reports of the County Lunatic Asylums at Lancaster, Prestwich, & Rainhill : presented to the Court of Adjourned Annual Session held on the 3rd of January 1855 with the accounts of the receipts and payments of the respective treasurers of the said asylums.

  • Lancaster County Lunatic Asylum.
Date:
1855
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The reports of the County Lunatic Asylums at Lancaster, Prestwich, & Rainhill : presented to the Court of Adjourned Annual Session held on the 3rd of January 1855 with the accounts of the receipts and payments of the respective treasurers of the said asylums. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    approbation of the Visiting Magistrates, these compartments were speedily abolished, along with all other forms of mechanical restraint then in common use in all parts of the establishment. Within the above period upwards of 3,000 patients have been under treatment, and only in one instance has it been deemed necessary to have recourse to me¬ chanical restraint; this occurred in 1844, in the case of a violent epileptic patient, who was placed under restraint for a period of six hours, the particulars of which were fully set forth in the report of that year : and it is gratifying to add that in no case subsequently has it been _ *» considered necessary or justifiable to adopt any kind of mechanical restraint as a remedial agent. Such a total revolution in the treatment of the insane in an old- established Asylum was not accomplished without much anxiety and difficulty; the prejudices of custom were to be softened down ; the fears and apprehensions of the attendants were to be subdued, and their willing co-operation gained in vigilantly seconding every effort to introduce a more humane mode of treatment: suffice it to say, that a steady and considerate perseverance ultimately surmounted every diffi¬ culty, and it is with no ordinary satisfaction that an appeal can now be confidently made to the statistics of the Asylum, in proof of the unspeak¬ able advantages of moral over mechanical means of treatment, as i observable in the general quietness and decorum of the establishment, in the cheerful aspect of the patients, in the comparative freedom from acts of destructive violence, and in the large proportion of inmates who are constantly engaged in some useful occupation ; to which might be added, a decreased mortality, and an increased per-centage of cures. But it must be allowed that, cotemporaneously with the changes above enumerated, it had been deemed necessary materially to improve the dietary, which could not fail in having a salutary effect, It may be