Mr. Gaskell, in addition to his good work as a reformer at the Lancaster Asylum, where may yet be seen preserved quite a museum of articles of restraint formerly in use in that institution, and his efficient labours as a Commissioner, was also, it may not be generally known, the real cause of the practical steps taken in this country to educate the idiot. It was in 1847 that he wrote some articles in Chamber's Journal, giving an account of Seguin's Idiot School at the Bicêtre, which he had visited and been greatly interested in. These articles had the effect of inducing Dr. Andrew Reed to interest himself in the establishment of a school for idiots in England. The Highgate and Colchester Asylums for idiots were instituted—the origin, as it proved, of the great establishment at Earlswood. All, therefore, that has been done for this pitiable class has been effected during the last forty years. The indefatigable Seguin has passed away during the last twelve months. He pursued to the last, with unabated zeal, a study possessing attractions for only a limited number, and advocated the claims of idiots and imbeciles with unceasing energy in the Old World and the New. Fortunately his mantle has descended upon a worthy successor in the person of his son, Dr. E. Seguin, of New York.
It has necessarily happened that the direction of public attention to the larger and better provision for the insane in all civilized lands has led to much consideration, and inevitably some difference of opinion as regards the form and arrangement of asylums. But all will admit that their construction has undergone a vast improvement in forty years. The tendency at the present moment is to attach less importance to bricks and mortar, and the security of the patient within a walled enclosure, than to grant the largest possible amount of freedom, in asylums, compatible with safety. The more this is carried out, the easier, it is to be hoped, will it be to induce the friends of patients to allow them to go in the earliest stage of the disorder to an asylum, as readily as they would to a hydropathic establishment or an ordinary hospital, to which end medical men may do much by ignoring the stupid stigma still attaching to having been in an asylum. The treatment of the insane ought to be such that we should be able to regard the asylums of the land as one vast Temple of Health, in which the priests of Esculapius, rivalling the Egyptians and Greeks of old, are constantly ministering, and are sacrificing their time and talents on the altar of Psyche.[299]
Most heartily do I agree with Dr. Kirkbride when he says that "Asylums can never be dispensed with—no matter how persistently ignorance, prejudice, or sophistry may declare to the contrary—without retrograding to a greater or less extent to the conditions of a past period with all the inhumanity and barbarity connected with it. To understand what would be the situation of a people without hospitals for their insane, it is only necessary to learn what their condition was when there were none."[300]
In advocating the prompt and facile recourse to an asylum, I include, of course, the cottage treatment of the insane so long ago resorted to by Dr. Bucknill, and extended in so admirable a manner by my immediate predecessor in this chair, whose practical observations last year on the villas and cottages at Cheadle rendered his address one of the most valuable that has been delivered. Moreover, I would not say a word in disparagement of the placing of suitable cases in the houses of medical men, or in lodgings, under frequent medical visitation.[301] I also recognize the value of intermediate or border-land institutions, so long as they are conducted with the sanction of the Commissioners and open to their inspection.
The modern advocacy of the open-door system has been recently brought under the notice of the Association by Dr. Needham, with the view of obtaining a general expression of opinion on a practice, to the wisdom of which he is disposed to demur.
But a less regard for mere bricks and mortar, the removal of high boundary walls and contracted airing-courts, or the introduction of the open-door system, do not lessen the importance of properly constructed asylums. The works of Jacobi in Germany, Kirkbride in America, Parchappe in France, and Conolly in England, must retain their value as classical productions on this subject; while the contributions recently made by Dr. Clouston present not only the general principles of asylum construction, but the minute details of building, in the light of the knowledge and experience of the present day.
I was fortunate in being able to render M. Parchappe some service when he visited England to examine the construction of our asylums. Those who formed his acquaintance on the occasion of this visit may remember his mixed feelings on visiting them, how he demurred on the one hand to what he regarded as too costly and ornamental, while, on the other hand, he liked the English arrangement of the buildings better than the Esquirol-Desportes system. I need not point out that those who have had the planning of the county asylums in England have objected, as well as Parchappe, to the distribution of isolated pavilions upon parallel lines. Parchappe, while far from believing it to be indispensable to make asylums monuments fitted to excite admiration for the richness of their architecture, and indisposed to emulate our asylums, which, he says, only belong to princely mansions, turns nevertheless from the square courts and the isolated pavilions of Esquirol to apostrophize the former in these glowing terms:—
"How much more suited to reanimate torpid intelligence and feeling, or to distract and console melancholy among the unfortunate insane, these edifices majestic in their general effect and comfortable in their details, these grandiose parks, with luxuriant plantations and verdant flowery lawns, whose harmonious association impresses upon English asylums an exceptional character of calm and powerful beauty!"
Whether a stranger, having read this florid description of our asylums, would not, on visiting them, be a little disappointed, I will not stop to inquire. Probably during this or the following week, some of Parchappe's compatriots may answer the question for themselves.