“Some years ago, a man, about thirty-four years of age, of almost Herculean size and figure, was brought to the house. He had been afflicted several times before; and so constantly, during the present attack, had he been kept chained, that his clothes were contrived to be taken off and put on by means of strings, without removing his manacles. They were, however, taken off, when he entered the Retreat, and he was ushered into the apartment where the superintendants were supping. He was calm: his attention appeared to be arrested by his new situation. He was desired to join in the repast, during which he behaved with tolerable propriety. After it was concluded, the superintendant conducted him to his apartment, and told him the circumstances on which his treatment would depend; that it was his anxious wish to make every inhabitant of the house as comfortable as possible; and that he sincerely hoped the patient’s conduct would render it unnecessary for him to have recourse to coercion. The maniac was sensible of the kindness of his treatment. He promised to restrain himself, and he so completely succeeded, that, during his stay, no coercive means were ever employed towards him. This case affords a striking example of the efficacy of mild treatment. The patient was frequently very vociferous, and threatened his attendants, who in their defence were very desirous of restraining him by the jacket. The superintendant, on these occasions, went to his apartment; and though the first sight of him seemed rather to increase the patient’s irritation; yet after sitting some time quietly beside him, the violent excitement subsided, and he would listen with attention to the persuasions and arguments of his friendly visitor. After such conversations, the patient was generally better for some days or a week; and in about four months he was discharged, perfectly recovered.”
“Can it be doubted, that, in this case, the disease had been greatly exasperated by the mode of management? or that the subsequent kind treatment had a great tendency to promote his recovery?”
“It may probably be urged, and I am very well aware of it, that there is a considerable class of patients, whose eccentricities may, in great measure, be controlled; and who may be kept in subjection and apparent orderly habits, by the strong excitement of the principle of fear.—They may be made to obey their keepers, with the greatest promptitude; to rise, to sit, to stand, to walk, or run at their pleasure; though only expressed by a look. Such an obedience, and even the appearance of affection, we not unfrequently see in the poor animals who are exhibited to gratify our curiosity in natural history: but who can avoid reflecting, in observing such spectacles, that the readiness with which the savage tiger obeys his master, is the result of treatment, at which humanity would shudder; and shall we propose by such means
“To calm the tumult of the breast,
Which madness has too long possest;
To chase away the fiend Despair,
To clear the brow of gloomy care;
Bid pensive Melancholy cease to mourn,
Calm Reason reassume her seat;
Each intellectual power return?”
“If those who are friendly to what may be termed the terrific system of management, could prove, that notwithstanding it may fix for life the misery of a large majority of the melancholies; and drive many of the more irritable maniacs to fury or desperation; yet that it is still, in its operation upon a large scale, adapted to promote the cure of insanity; they would have some apology for its discriminate adoption. If, on the contrary, a statement of the proportion of cures in the Retreat, shall sufficiently prove the superior efficacy of mild means, would not those, who are adopting an opposite line of treatment, do well to reflect on the awful responsibility which attaches to their conduct. Let us all constantly remember, that there is a Being, to whose eye darkness is light; who sees the inmost recesses of the dungeon, and who has declared, ‘For the sighing of the poor, and the crying of the needy, I will arise.’”
“From the view we have now taken of the propriety of exciting fear, as a means of promoting the cure of insanity, by enabling the patient to control himself, it will, perhaps, be almost superfluous to state as our opinion, that the idea, which has too generally obtained, of it being necessary to commence an acquaintance with lunatics, by an exhibition of strength, or an appearance of austerity, is utterly erroneous. The sentiment appears allied to that cruel system, probably dictated by indolence and timidity, which has so long prevailed, and unhappily still prevails, in many receptacles for the insane.”
“There is much analogy between the judicious treatment of children, and that of insane persons. Locke has observed that ‘the great secret of education, lies in finding the way to keep the child’s spirit easy, active, and free; and yet, at the same time, to restrain him from many things he has a mind to, and to draw him to many things which are uneasy to him.’”
It is highly desirable that the attendants on lunatics should possess this influence over their minds, but it will never be obtained by austerity and rigour; nor will assumed consequence and airs of self-importance be generally more successful; at the same time, it must be acknowledged that as insanity is often the consequence of over-indulgence, as well as of a system of tyranny, while under parental care, that therefore both extremes are to be, not only avoided, but their effects counteracted by a judicious and curative system of treatment, and that this will require to be varied according to the peculiarities of each individual case.
A private establishment, where cure and reformation are thus conjoined, becomes an interesting little world of its own. Though to live in this world is a life of ceaseless anxiety, there is such a perpetual succession of such an endless and inconceivable variety of strange incidents and speeches, odd displays of feelings and manners, inside views of the human heart, and, as it were, of the invisible world, that the charms of novelty, the excitements of wonder, the enquiries of reason, and the demands of sympathy, keep the mind so alive, that I have often observed that the revolutions of the sun seem to run their course more rapidly now, than before I lived among them. And though the feeling of being excluded from rational society, often presents itself to the mind as a terrible sacrifice to those whose earliest and fondest wish was to live in the sphere of intellect and genius, yet we are often reminded that they are not always irrational, that some, are so only on a single point, while on every other they possess more than common powers of pleasing; others, are in a state of convalescence, and many of them are, for a while at least, grateful and amiable in the extreme; and it is delightful to see those who awake from a lost or raving state, as from a sound sleep or a disturbed dream, with all the freshness of joyous gratitude and celestial ecstacy, on suddenly beholding a new world of mind and matter bursting upon them. So that if we cannot always exist in an intellectual sphere, we are seldom without that of affection and gratitude; and though it is difficult to prevent, in such scenes as must often assail us, occasional paroxysms of discontent and wearisomeness coming over us, they seldom last long, and they are sometimes cured, as well as brought on, by an occasional peep into the motley world.
Shut out from the world, one is as apt at one time, on again entering into it, to be as much oversurprised and delighted with the blessed fire-side scenes where the wise and good man resides, as one is at another time to be equally over-disappointed and revolted with the follies and miseries of the moral insanities which exist unrestrained among men in real life. Nor do I conceive we have more appalling consequences of disobedience to the natural and divine laws of our being, in this place, than can be seen in the world, walking in wantonness in the broad light of the noon-day sun.