at Kew; another day they went by steamboat to the Nore; and, conducting
themselves well under the charge of careful attendants, visited many
public exhibitions--the National Gallery, the Crystal Palace, Marlborough
House, the Zoological Gardens, Smithfield Cattle-show, &c." Who can doubt
that people accustomed to such sights and sounds would infinitely prefer
them to the delights of walking between hedge-rows, hoeing weeds, or
digging potatoes? Who can doubt that these little excursions of the
wall-bound inmates into the cheerful life of the outside world are a vast
advantage to the slowly-recovering brain, and constitute just that
desirable transitional training necessary to their safe restitution to
unlimited freedom? In fact, under the old system, when convalescent
patients, who had been confined for months in dungeon-like cells,
bristling with bars, were taken to the gates and returned suddenly to
unrestrained liberty, the effect of the contrast was often so great, that
they set off running in a paroxysm of excitement, and were frequently
brought back again in a few days, reduced by a too abrupt release to their
old condition. It would not perhaps be undesirable to add to Bethlehem
some small rural establishment, answering to the _succursales_ of foreign
lunatic asylums; but this should be strictly an appendage, to which
patients should be sent for a short time, for change of air and scene,
just as all the world now and then take a trip to the country to refresh
the wearied eye with the sight of green trees and fields, and to cure that
moral scurvy contracted by perpetually dwelling upon the dismal vistas of
blackened bricks which constitute metropolitan prospects.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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