It would appear that the mitigation of restraint, as evidenced by these minutes (which commence with 1819), "was ever the principle," to use Mr. Hill's own words, "pressed upon the attention of the Boards of the Lincoln Asylum by its able and humane physician, Dr. Charlesworth, at whose suggestion many of the more cruel instruments of restraint were long since destroyed, very many valuable improvements and facilities gradually adopted, and machinery set in motion which has led to the unhoped-for result of actual abolition, under a firm determination to work out the system to its utmost applicable limits." Mr. Hill became house surgeon in 1835; and it will be seen, by the table already given, that the amount of restraint (which, in consequence of Dr. Charlesworth's exertions, had already remarkably decreased) became less and less under the united efforts of these gentlemen, until the close of the year 1837, when restraint was entirely abolished; and while, on the one hand, as Mr. Hill frankly acknowledges, "to his [Dr. Charlesworth's] steady support, under many difficulties, I owe chiefly the success which has attended my plans and labours," while Dr. Charlesworth's great merit, both before and after Mr. Hill's appointment, must never be overlooked, it is due to the latter gentleman to admit that he was the first _to assert the principle_ of the entire abolition of mechanical restraint, as is stated in the "Fourteenth Annual Report of the Lincoln Asylum," which report is signed by Dr. Charlesworth himself. For a time there were, certainly, some drawbacks to the success of the Lincoln experiment, from the serious physical effects (such as broken ribs, etc.), which occasionally resulted from the struggles between attendants and patients; and it is probable that, had not the experiment been carried out on a much larger scale at Hanwell by Dr. Conolly, with far greater success, a reaction would have ensued, of infinite injury to the cause of the insane.