AN INQUIRY INTO THE ALLEGED TENDENCY OF THE SEPARATION OF CONVICTS, ONE FROM THE OTHER, TO PRODUCE DISEASE AND DERANGEMENT.
By a Citizen of Pennsylvania. Philadelphia: E. C. & J. Biddle. 1849.
It is, as might possibly be anticipated from the residence of the author, an elaborate and ardent defence of the separate system of confinement. The charge of its peculiar tendency to induce disease and insanity, is altogether denied, and the testimony of the successive physicians to the Eastern State Penitentiary, during a term of nearly twenty years, goes very satisfactorily to warrant the denial.
The author is not, however, inclined to rest at this, but carries the war into the enemies’ camp. The chapter entitled Medical Practice, in a Congregate Prison, is calculated to attract attention, from the positions laid down in it, and their startling illustrations, deduced from the well known case of Abner Rogers. It is not the time or the place for us to enter on this warmly controverted subject, and we have noticed the work only on account of its bearing on the subject of insanity, and as forming a part of its literature.—Am. Journal of Insanity, published by the Superintendent of the New York Lunatic Asylum, July, 1850.
So far as the leading controversy, in regard to the rival systems of prison discipline, is concerned, it seems to us to cover the entire ground with singular ability.—Princeton Review.
⇒ A few copies of this pamphlet are still on hand, and may be had on application to the publishers, corner of Fifth and Minor streets, or to any member of the Acting Committee.
See [p. 112].
THE
PENNSYLVANIA JOURNAL
OF
PRISON DISCIPLINE.
Vol. VIII.—JULY, 1853—No. 3.