Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British IslesTuke, Daniel Hack
History
Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles
Tuke, Daniel Hack
Mental health laws -- Great Britain; Mental illness -- Great Britain; Mentally ill -- Care; Psychiatric hospitals -- Great Britain
"'_Advantage of the Farm as a Source of Occupation._--... The number of
persons available for work on an asylum farm is always great; and in
those asylums where full advantage has been taken of the opportunities
which the farm affords, it is found that the directions in which the
labour of patients may be utilized are much more numerous and various
than at first sight may appear. For instance, one large outlet for their
labour is supplied by the use of spade husbandry in circumstances in
which the ordinary farmer would use the plough. Another outlet is to be
found in the cultivation of crops of garden vegetables, which the
ordinary farmer does not usually undertake. The carrying out of
improvements on the farm or estate also gives employments of various
kinds, and it is here, perhaps, that what may be called the elasticity
of land as a source of labour for asylum inmates becomes more evident.
If the land attached to an asylum is of any considerable extent, it will
nearly always happen that important re-arrangements are deemed
desirable; and when there is a disposition to encourage improvements of
this kind, it is generally found that they afford a very abundant and
varied source of labour. Road-making, embanking, draining, fencing,
planting, and even building, are generally found to be required; and in
connection with these things, and with the work more accurately included
under the term agricultural, there are subsidiary forms of industry
developed. Indeed, the different kinds of work afforded by the
re-arrangements and improvements on an estate prove of great value in
asylum administration, for they afford some of the simplest kinds of
outdoor labour. Many patients can be engaged in such occupations as
digging and wheeling, who can with difficulty be engaged in less simple
kinds of work; and by securing an ample supply of such simple work the
number of patients who share in the benefits of active healthy labour in
the open air is much increased....
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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