To-day we witness its success.
And had I had time to sketch the progress in the provision made for criminal lunatics, we should have found that just forty years ago was the commencement of what Dr. Nicolson has named the "Reactionary Period"—during which this Association petitioned the Government (in 1851) to establish a criminal lunatic asylum—followed in 1860 by the "Period of Centralization" or that of Broadmoor—an institution to-day so efficiently superintended by Dr. Orange.
And in what consists the superiority of the new over the old system of treatment—the nineteenth over the eighteenth century?
The old system was mainly one of brute force—the child alike of ignorance and fear.
The new does not indeed dispense with force, but it is a maxim of the reformed school, from which no one, whose opinion carries weight in psychological medicine, whether in America or in Europe, would dissent, that it should be reduced to the lowest possible point, consistent with safety and the good of the patient, and that humanity should dictate the means of repressing, or rather guarding against, violence, both as regards their amount and character.
The old system subjected patients, who underwent any medical treatment at all, to a miserable routine, often determined by the season of the year and the phases of the moon, rather than the condition of the patient.
The new does not pretend to possess a universal formula, or to have discovered the psychologist's stone, but strives to treat each patient according to individual indications.
The old system desired secrecy; the new is not afraid of publicity.
The old system, in short, believed in harshness and darkness; the creed of the new is, "I believe in sweetness and light."