Twentieth annual report of the medical superintendent / Nova Scotia Hospital for the Insane.

  • Nova Scotia Hospital for the Insane.
Date:
1878
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Twentieth annual report of the medical superintendent / Nova Scotia Hospital for the Insane. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    that, within certain restrictions, it could be so carried out as to be advantageous to the Hospital, and beneficial to the patients. Thus did we write in our report for 1861, and the lemarks were supplemented by quotations from the best authorities, including Sir James Coxe and Dr. W. A. F. Browne, Commissioners in Lunacy for Scotland. It had even before that period been proved in continental asylums, that this plan could be satisfactorily carried out, but no record is given, so far as I am aware, of its having been introduced, except in a very limited way, into British or American Asylums. Gratuities are awarded it is true, and extra diet is allowed to industrious patients, but a fair and impartial system of payment for labor according to valuation has not been arrived at, until quite recently. Dr. Orange, Superintendent of the State Asylum for insane crim¬ inals, at Broadmoor, England, was the first to carry the scheme into practice systematically ; and he has found it to work admirably. He states as follows :— “A change in the character of the inducement held out to patients, with a view of leading them to employ themselves usefully, was made in 1874, and this change has been attended by a considerable increase in the amount of profitable work performed.” “In 1875 the issuing of beer in the forenoon and afternoon as a reward for work, was discontinued, and a scheme was introduced instead by which a small portion of the money value of the work actually done, is credited to the workers, to be expended for them, according to their individual tastes, in procuring trifling luxuries of a harmless nature.” The estimated value of the work in the mechanical departments, increased by more than one hundred per cent., and “ notwithstanding the allotment of sums of money to the working patients, the annual cost of maintenance has undergone reduction to a very appreciable extent.” Dr. Orange submits blank forms of the account books in which the work and its value are registered, and he gives explanatory remarks. The value is estimated by piece work wThen practicable. No cash passes into the patients hands ; they fill in a requisition which is countersigned by the Superintendent, and a strict account is kept of every item. That this system is worthy of adoption and ought to be generally acted upon, is proved not only by this successful experiment at Broadmoor, but also by previous examples elsewhere, as noted above. Because a man is deprived of the light of reason, it does not follow that his right to compensation for work performed, is thereby forfeited. It may be granted that the earnings of patients only average about one-fifth of the value of hired labor ; but whether the ratio of remun¬ eration be large, or small, it ought to be carefully estimated and impartially distributed; for no one will deny that “ the laborer is worthy of his hire.”