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
"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 singularly well shown.
Unfortunately it was not peculiar to Smollett.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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