They had no large asylums such as we have now, but neither did they have
any poor-houses; yet we have come to recognize how readily they solved the
social evils of poverty. The almshouses at Stratford, with their
accommodations for an old man and his wife living together, are a typical,
still extant example of this. Each small community cared for its own
sufferers. They did not solve their social problems in the mass fashion
which we have learned is so liable to abuse, but each little town cared to
a great extent for its own mentally ailing. They were able to do this
mainly because hospitals were rather frequent; and psychic cases were, at
the beginning, cared for in hospitals, and when in milder state their near
relatives were willing to take more bother in caring for them than in our
time. Delirious states due to fever had not yet been definitely
differentiated from the acute insanities, and all these cases then were
taken in by the hospitals. This was an excellent thing for patients,
because they came under hospital care early; and one of the developments
that must come in our modern hospitals is a psychopathic ward in every one
of them, for patients will be saved the worst developments of their
affection.
The better-to-do classes found refuges for their non-violent insane in
certain monasteries and convents, or in parts of monastic establishments
particularly set aside for this purpose. When the patient was of the
higher nobility, he was often put in charge of a monk or of several
religious, and confined in a portion of his own or a kinsman's castle and
cared for for years. There are traditions of similar care for the
peasantry who were connected with monastic establishments, and sometimes
small houses were set apart for their use on the monastery grounds. As
cities grew in extent, certain hospitals received mental patients as well
as the physically ailing, keeping them segregated. After a time some of
these hospitals were entirely set aside for this purpose. Bedlam in
England, which had been the old Royal Bethlehem Hospital for the care of
all forms of illness, came to be just before the end of the thirteenth
century exclusively for the care of the insane. In Spain particularly the
asylums for the insane were well managed, and came to be models for other
countries. This development in Spain is sometimes attributed to the Moors,
but there is absolutely no reason for this attribution, except the desire
to minimize Christianity's influence, even though this effort should
attempt the impossible feat of demonstrating Mohammedanism as an organizer
of charity and social service.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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