Produced by Jonathan Ingram, S.D., and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF/Gallica) at http://gallica.bnf.fr) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Transcriber's Note: Italics are represented with _underscores_. Superscript letters are surrounded by curly brackets, as in y{t}. For detailed information about the corrections and changes made, see the end of the text. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Illustration: ORIGINAL BUILDING OF THE RETREAT, YORK. INSTITUTED 1792. _From a Painting by Cave._] [_Frontispiece._] CHAPTERS IN THE HISTORY OF THE INSANE _IN THE BRITISH ISLES_ BY DANIEL HACK TUKE, M.D., F.R.C.P. PRESIDENT OF THE MEDICO-PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION, JOINT EDITOR OF "THE JOURNAL OF MENTAL SCIENCE," AND FORMERLY VISITING PHYSICIAN TO THE YORK RETREAT "I might multiply these instances almost indefinitely, but I thought it was desirable just to indicate the state of things that existed, in order to contrast the Past with the Present."--EARL OF SHAFTESBURY. _WITH FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS_ LONDON KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH & CO., 1, PATERNOSTER SQUARE 1882 (_The rights of translation and of reproduction are reserved._) DEDICATED TO JONATHAN HUTCHINSON, F.R.S., PROFESSOR OF PATHOLOGY AND SURGERY, ROYAL COLLEGE OF SURGEONS, ENGLAND, IN MEMORY OF A LONG FRIENDSHIP. PREFACE. I think it was Pascal who said that the last thing an author does in making a book is to discover what to put at the beginning. This discovery is easily made in the present instance. I wish to state that the range of this book, as its title implies, is mainly restricted to the salient points of the historical sketch it attempts to pourtray. To have written a complete History of the Insane in the British Isles would have necessitated the narration of details uninteresting to the general reader. Hence, as the periods and the institutions of greatest importance have alone been brought into prominence, others have been inevitably thrown into the shade. Thus Bethlem Hospital has occupied much space as the centre around which gathers a large amount of historic interest, having been with our forefathers almost the only representative for many centuries of the attempt to provide for the insane in England--the outward symbol of nearly all they knew on the subject. To the Retreat at York, again, considerable attention has been devoted in this history, as the cradle of reform which made the year 1792 the date of the new departure in the treatment of the unhappy class, on whose behalf the various charitable and national acts recorded in this volume have been performed.