“A chyrche of Owre Lady that ys namyde Bedlam. And yn that place ben founde many men that ben fallyn owte of hyr wytte. And fulle honestely they ben kepte in that place; and sum ben restoryde unto hyr witte and helthe a-gayne. And sum ben a-bydyng there yn for evyr, for they ben falle soo moche owte of hem selfe that hyt ys uncurerabylle unto man.”
In her chapter on Hospitals for the Insane in “Medieval Hospitals of England,”[17] Miss Clay gives a number of details of the care of the insane in England, and notes that the Rolls of Parliament (1414) mention “hospitals ... to maintain men and women who had lost their wits and memory”; manifestly they had some experience which differentiated cases of aphasia from those of insanity. She says that outside of London “it was customary to receive persons suffering from attacks of mania into general infirmaries. At Holy Trinity, Salisbury, not only were sick persons and women in childbirth received, but mad people were to be taken care of (furiosi custodiantur donec sensum adipiscantur). This was at the close of the fourteenth century. In the petition for the reformation of hospitals (1414), it is stated that they existed partly to maintain those who had lost their wits and memory (hors de leur sennes et mémoire).”
Further evidence of the presence of the insane with other patients is to be found in the fact that in certain hospitals and almshouses it was forbidden to receive the insane, showing that in many places that must have been the custom. Miss Clay notes:
“Many almshouse-statutes, however, prohibited their admission. A regulation concerning an endowed bed in St. John’s, Coventry (1444), declared that a candidate must be ‘not mad, quarrelsome, leprous, infected.’ At Ewelme ‘no wood man’ [crazy person] must be received; and an inmate becoming ‘madd, or woode,’ was to be removed from the Croydon almshouse.”
Desmaisons is responsible for the tradition which declares there were no asylums for the insane until the beginning of the fifteenth century, and that then they were founded by the Spaniards under the influence of the Mohammedans. Lecky, in his “History of European Morals,” has contradicted this assertion of Desmaisons’, and declares that there is absolutely no proof for it. Burdett, in his “History of Hospitals,” vol. i., p. 42, says with regard to this question:
“Again, Desmaisons states that the ‘origin of the first establishment exclusively devoted to the insane dates back to A.D. 1409. This date constitutes an historic fact, the importance of which doubtless needs no demonstration. Its importance stands out all the more clearly when we calculate the lapse of time between the period just spoken of (1409) and that in which Spain’s example’ (Desmaisons is here referring to the Valencia asylum as the first in Europe) ‘found so many followers.’ Now, as a matter of fact, an asylum exclusively for the use of the mentally infirm existed at Metz in the year A.D. 1100, and another at Elbing, near Danzic, in 1320. Again, there was an ancient asylum, according to Dugdale, known as Berking Church Hospital, near the Tower of London, for which Robert Denton, chaplain, obtained a licence from King Edward III. in A.D. 1371. Denton paid forty shillings for this licence, which empowered him to found a hospital in a house of his own, in the parish of Berking Church, London, ‘for the poor priests, and for men and women in the said city who suddenly fall into a frenzy and lose their memory, who were to reside there till cured; with an oratory to the said hospital to the invocation of the Blessed Virgin Mary.’”
The passages from Aëgineta at the beginning of this chapter represent a thorough understanding of mental diseases often supposed not to exist at this time. Often it is presumed that this thorough appreciation of insanity gradually disappeared during subsequent centuries, and was not revived until almost our own time. It is quite easy, however, to illustrate by quotations from the second half of the Middle Ages a like sensible treatment of the subject of insanity by scientific and even popular writers. How different was the attitude of mind of the medieval people toward lunacy from that which is usually assumed as existing at that time may be gathered very readily from the paragraph in “Bartholomeus’ Encyclopædia” with regard to madness. I doubt whether in a brief discussion so much that is absolutely true could be better said in our time. Insanity, according to old Bartholomew, was due to some poison, autointoxication, or strong drink. The treatment is prevention of injury to themselves or others, quiet and peaceful retirement, music, and occupation of mind. The paragraph itself is worth while having near one, in order to show clearly the medieval attitude toward the insane of even ordinarily well-informed folk, for Bartholomew was the most read book of popular information during the Middle Ages.
Bartholomew himself was only a compiler of information—a very learned man, it is true, but a clergyman-teacher, not a physician. Translations of his book were probably more widely read in England, in proportion to the number of the reading public, than any modern encyclopædia has ever been. He said:
“Madness cometh sometime of passions of the soul, as of business and of great thoughts, of sorrow and of too great study, and of dread: sometime of the biting of a wood-hound [mad dog], or some other venomous beast; sometime of melancholy meats, and sometime of drink of strong wine. And as the causes be diverse, the tokens and signs be diverse. For some cry and leap and hurt and wound themselves and other men, and darken and hide themselves in privy and secret places. The medicine of them is, that they be bound, that they hurt not themselves and other men. And namely such shall be refreshed, and comforted, and withdrawn from cause and matter of dread and busy thoughts. And they must be gladded with instruments of music and some deal be occupied.” (Italics ours.)
Bartholomew recognizes the two classes of causes of mental disturbance, the mental and the physical, and, it will be noted, has nothing to say about the spiritual—that is, diabolic possession. Writing in the thirteenth century, diabolism was not a favourite thought of the men of his time, and Bartholomew omits reference to it as a cause of madness entirely. Food and drink, and especially strong spirituous liquor, are set down as prominent causes. It may seem curious in our time that the bite of a mad dog, or a “wood hound,” as Bartholomew put it, should be given so important a place; but in the absence of legal regulation rabies must have been rather common, and the disease was so striking from the fact that its onset was often delayed for a prolonged interval after the bite, that it is no wonder that a popular encyclopædist should make special note of it.