Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles. Daniel Hack Tuke

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СКАЧАТЬ target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="#ulink_207e5599-8275-50aa-81ed-4a743d35a1f0">[91] Dr. Munk.

[92] Edinburgh Review, 1817, p. 443.

[93] Exemption from the operation of previous Acts had been obtained by 22 Geo. III., c. 77, s. 58; 9 Geo. IV., c. 40; and 2 and 3 Will. IV., c. 107, s. 62.

[94] A view of the hospital may be seen in the Print Room of the British Museum: vide manuscript "Index to Views," vol. viii. print 253. It is anything but inviting. Print 257 exhibits the building in Old Street.

[95] "The Battiad," attributed to Moses Mendez, Paul Whitehead, and Dr. Schomberg.

[96] See Thornbury's "Old and New London," vol. ii. p. 200.

[97] "Some Account of London," 3rd edit. 1793, p. 268.

[98] Manuscript memorandum of a visit to St. Luke's in 1812, by S. Tuke.

[99] These particulars are taken from St. Luke's Annual Report of 1851, containing a retrospective sketch of its history, for the use of which we are indebted to the present superintendent, Dr. Mickley. Statistics of recovery are given for different periods, but the fallacies attending such comparisons are so great that I have not cited the figures.

CHAPTER III.

       EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ASYLUMS—FOUNDATION OF THE YORK RETREAT.

       Table of Contents

      There were in England, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, private asylums for the insane, the beneficial treatment pursued in which was loudly vaunted in the public ear; but I am afraid the success was not equal to the promise or the boast. Thus, there was in London an old manor house in Clerkenwell, previously the residence of the Northampton family, which was converted into a private asylum by Dr. Newton the herbalist. His work, "The Herbal," was published by his son some years afterwards. There appeared in the Post Boy (No. 741) in the year 1700 an advertisement from Dr. Newton, which runs as follows:—"In Clerkenwell Close, where the figures of Mad People are over the Gate, liveth one who by the blessing of God cures all Lunatick, distracted, or mad people; he seldom exceeds three months in the cure of the Maddest person that comes in his house; several have been cured in a fortnight and some in less time; he has cured several from Bedlam, and other mad-houses in and about the city, and has conveniency for people of what quality soever. No cure—No money."

      A certain Dr. Fallowes published a work on insanity which attracted some attention at this period, having for its title, "The Best Method for the Cure of Lunatics, with some Accounts of the Incomparable Oleum Cephalicum used in the same, prepared and administered."[100] The author observes in his preface that "as this Kingdom perhaps most abounds with lunaticks, so the greatest variety of distractions are to be seen among us; for the spleen to which it has been observed this nation is extremely subject, often rises up to very enormous degrees, and what we call Hypo often issues in Melancholy, and sometimes in Raving Madness." The proper seat of madness, he adds, appears to be the brain, "which is disturbed by black vapours which clog the finer vessels thro' which the animal spirits ought freely to pass, and the whole mass of blood, being disordered, either overloads the small veins of the brain, or by too quick a motion, causes a hurry and confusion of the mind, from which ensues a giddiness and at length a fury. The abundance of bile, which is rarely found to have any tolerable secretion in such patients, both begets and carries on the disorder." Again, it will be seen that there is nothing more than the fashionable classic humoral pathology, without any original observations, and, in fact, the book is little more than a puff of his incomparable oleum cephalicum, "a noble medicine," which he professes to have discovered; "a composition so very curious, which I have known the use and benefit of in so many instances, that I can venture to assure it to be the best medicine in the world in all the kinds of lunacy I have met with. It is of an excellent and most pleasant smell, and by raising small pustules upon the head, which I always anoint with it, opens the parts which are condensed and made almost insensible by the black vapours fixed upon the brain; it confirms its texture, strengthens the vessels, and gives a freedom to the blood and spirit enclosing them.... When applied after the greatest fury and passion, it never fails to allay the orgasm of the animal spirits, and sweetly compose 'em.... The distemper will be soon discharged, and I have known it frequently to produce a cure in the space of one month." He tells the reader he has had £10 a quart for it, but in compassion for the poor he has prepared a quantity to be sold at £4 a quart at his house. He also boasts of his kind treatment, and says, "The rough and cruel treatment which is said to be the method of most of the pretenders to this cure, is not only to be abhorred, but, on the contrary, all the gentleness and kindness in the world is absolutely necessary, even in all the cases I have seen." He says that not only has he never used violence, but that his patients have good and wholesome food in every variety, and maintains that such entertainments as are fit for persons of any degree or quality will be found in his house in Lambeth Marsh, "where the air is neither too settled and thin, nor too gross." As chalybeate waters and cold bathing are useful, they can be had near, at the Lambeth waters and in the Southwark Park; and he closes his book by declaring that he is "always ready to serve mankind upon such terms as shall be acknowledged reasonable and proportioned to the character and condition of every patient."

      Whether the patients placed under his care were treated as scientifically and kindly as at the well-known asylum now in Lambeth Road does not admit of question, although the latter has not much to say of the "black vapours fixed upon the brain," nor can it, I am afraid, boast of such a panacea as the oleum cephalicum!

      I may add that, contemporary with Dr. Fallowes, an anonymous physician in London published "A Discourse of the Nature, Cause, and Cure of Melancholy and Vapours," in which he prescribes for the former, among other remedies, not only "salt armoniac" (sic), steel filings, red coral, zedoary, xyloalics, but, strangest of all, toasted silk!

      Had we no other means of knowing the treatment to which some at least of the insane were subjected in the early part of the eighteenth century, we might infer it from a single passage in Swift's "Tale of a Tub," in which the author says, in a "Digression concerning Madness," that original people, like Diogenes, would, had they lived in his day, be treated like madmen, that is, would incur the danger of "phlebotomy, and whips, and chains, and dark chambers, and straw."

      This was written in 1704.

      

      Another well-known writer of that period, Smollett, did not distinguish himself for generous views in regard to the insane, and forms a complete contrast to his contemporary, Defoe, in his ideas of what the legislature ought to do for the insane—a contrast greatly to the credit of the latter. Smollett thought it would be neither absurd nor unreasonable for the legislature to divest all lunatics of the privilege of insanity in cases of enormity—by which he evidently means violent or homicidal acts—to subject them "to the common penalties of the law." He maintains that the consequences of murder by a maniac may be as pernicious to society as those of the most criminal and deliberate assassination. The entire inability indicated by this sentiment to distinguish between voluntary and involuntary acts, the result of disease—between motives and consequences—is СКАЧАТЬ