ENGLISH TREATMENT OF LUNATICS.

" Phlebotomy, and whips, and chains, and dark chambers, and straw."— SWIFT.

Ned Ward, who in 1703 paid a visit to Bedlam, and "could think of nothing but Don Quevedo's vision, where the lost souls broke loose and put hell in an uproar," would, if he visited a well-managed asylum, think, on comparing notes, that he had followed Dante into Paradise. He would see no naked wretches, loaded with chains and howling wildly as the keeper struck them. There would be no such foul plague-centres as he saw long ago, and, above all, there would be no sightseers allowed to goad the afflicted into frenzy, and take the worth of their penny in scenes of utter misery. Instead, he would see a hospital, not a prison. He would see those visited with mental diseases cared for and tended as well as, in other institutions, the physically diseased. Here would be no whips, no chains, no straw, no rags, no instruments of torture, but the violent are restrained by moral force, and cleanliness is above all things enforced. Or, perhaps the visitor might come on an evening and find the largest hall crowded with happy creatures listening to the strains of music or joining in the dance. It may be that the movements are whimsical enough and that energy is more aimed at than grace, but still what a change ! A century ago the occupants of that room would be treated as criminals, and would be stretching their gaunt and maimed limbs on the foulest straw, bound down with chains and fetters.
It may prove not uninteresting to say a few words about the way in which England used to treat the insane members of her population. The story, as it may be gathered from the authorities, is full of harrowing and loathsome details, the very reading of which makes one shiver. Sydney Smith, writing years ago on this subject, said that he could not spare his readers the disgust which the story caused, because it was right that it should be told, and the abuses of the system remembered for ever, as the only means of preventing their recurrence. Happily the same necessity does not rest upon writers in our time, and we shall therefore be able to omit the revolting parts of the study. There is no need to go back very far in English history, for it is only very lately, in 1838, that the restraint system was first abolished in an asylum.
How were the insane treated before then ? One Dr. Borde, who lived in the sixteenth century, gives the following valuable prescription :—
" I do advertyse every man the whiche is madde or lunatycke or frantycke or demonyacke, to be kept in safegarde in some close house or chamber where there is lytell light; and that we have a keeper, the whiche the madde man do feare."
But this is a very humane prescription, comparatively speaking. Sir Thomas More, in his time, gives an account of his treatment of a poor wretch who disturbed the priest and people at Church :—
" Whereupon I beinge advertised of these pageauntes, and beinge sent unto and required by very devout relygious folke to take some other order with him, caused him, as he came wanderinge by my doore, to be taken by the constables and bounden to a tree in the streete before the whole towne, and ther they stripped (striped) him with roddes therefore till he waxed weary and somewhat lenger. And it appeared well that hys remembraunce was goode ineoughe save that it went about in grazing til it was beaten home. For he could then verye wel reherse his fautes him selfe, and speake and treate very well, and promise to doe afterward as well. And verylye God be thanked I heare none harme of him now."
Here is another illustration of the whipping-cure employed in olden time. The Constable's account at Great Staughton, Huntingdonshire, has this item:—
"Item. Paid in charges, taking up a distracted woman, watching her and whipping her next day, 8s. 6d," though this seems to be rather a high price to pay when we consider a contemporaneous entry— "Paid Thomas Hawkins for whipping two people that had the small pox, 8d,"
Truly our forefathers had simple remedies. Nowadays we keep up asylums and hospitals at great expense, whilst they for a few 'pence would have the offending devils whipped out of the possessed. Shakspeare makes Rosalind talk in a very cheerful way about such treatment of lunatics, and he evidently had no more objection to the system than any of his fellows.
But we are not to suppose that the discovery of this striking cure exhausted our forefathers' invention. The casual reference to another system of treatment contained in the fragment from "Tale of a Tub" which stands at the head of this article is supplemented by the evidence given before the Commons Committee of 1815 by Dr. Thomas Monro, who had held the office of Visiting Physician at Bedlam since 1783. "Patients," he says, " are ordered to be bled about the latter end of May, according to the weather ; and after they have been bled they take vomits once a week for a certain number of weeks ; after that we purge the patients. That has been the practice invariably for years before my time ; it was handed down to me by my father, and I do not know any better practice." John Wesley gave a wonderful prescription :— " Let him (the lunatic) eat nothing but apples for a month !" There is nothing very harsh about this, but possibly the patient might feel considerably the worse after his month's diet, unless, indeed, Wesley went somewhat on the homoeopathic principle and believed that a practice which would justify suspicion of a man's sanity would tend to make him sane. All kinds of quacks used to publish statements of their perfect cures of madness. Here is an advertisement which we take from that interesting book, Mr. Ashton's "Social Life in the Reign of Queen Anne." It runs—
" At the Pestle and Mortar on Snow Hill, is a Person who has had great Experience and success in curing Lunaticks ; he has also convenience for Persons of both Sexes, good and diligent Attendance for the best ranks of People, and having for many years past per form'd it to the satisfaction of many Famillies : He therefore makes this Publick, to inform, where on very reasonable rates the same Cure shall be industriously endeavour'd, and (with God's Blessing) effected."
Observe the mingled piety and bad grammar which this advertisement exhibits, and his reference to his "conveniences for Persons of both Sexes" furnishes an instance of that hotbed of barbarity which Daniel Defoe in past ages and Charles Reade in our own so forcibly condemned.
Private asylums for the insane were worse than the Bastille. Husbands anxious to get rid of their wives, heirs desirous to come into the property which the right owners were keeping them out of, criminals who wished to silence those conscious of their crimes — all found in the private asylum system, as it was then conducted, their readiest aid. In those days there were no medical enquirers appointed by the Government to inspect private asylums, and anybody who wished might establish one. Once inside those gloomy walls the poor unfortunates might well abandon hope and wish for death. Surrounded by savage keepers, whose recipe for all cases was restraint and brutal punishment, and by a mercenary gaoler, who knew that when his lodger went all hope of gain from his relations went too, the wretched man might well become insane indeed. The shrieks of the unhappy prisoners incarcerated with him, the gruesome sights and horrid sounds which everywhere met his eyes and ears would drive any man, however clear in intellect, into madness. And when he was really mad what hope of his recovery? What hope of his restoration to liberty ?
How were patients admitted to asylums? Dr. Tuke, the son of the man who initiated the York Retreat in 1792, has preserved a sample of the means employed even in the nineteenth century. We give the following certificate verbatim, and readers may well be surprised that to such a person as the man who signed it was committed by the English law power over the liberty, and indeed the life, of an English citizen :—
"Hey. Broadway, A Potecary, of Gillingham, Certefy that Mr. James Bart Misfortin happened by a Plow in the Hed, which is the Ocaision of his Ell ness and By the Rising and Falling of the Blood, And I think a Blister and Bleeding and Meddesen will be A Very Great thing. But Mr. James Bart wold not A Gree to be don at Home. March 21, 1809. Hey. Broadway."
On the faith of this illiterate scrawl, which it requires particular attention to read, "Mr. James Bart" was admitted to Dr. Finch's Asylum at Salisbury. In olden time, before the world became civilized, the simple people held that a certain divinity shed its halo over one deprived of reason. They thought that to one so heavily visited by the gods some retribution had been made in other ways, and so they regarded him as one somewhat above them, not entirely of this world. That was soon changed, as we have seen, and the beings whom Defoe described as "a particular rentcharge on the great family of mankind," were treated worse than wild beasts. Take an instance which occurred in the Augustan age of English literature, when poets and wits abounded, and England took credit to her self as a nation peculiarly polite. How does this advertisement read?— and doubt less it is but one of numerous instances—
" A Dumb young Man broke his Chain last Wednesday Night, and left his Friends from their House in Compton-street, next door to the Golden Ball Alehouse, Soho, and those that will take care to bring him Home shall be Rewarded. He has been Mad these 23 Years."
What a ghastly history these few lines relate ! The young man left his friends. He was dumb, and, perhaps, with the dumbness which forbade his telling of his wrongs he had derived madness from his parents. His "friends" were burdened with his maintenance. He could do nothing for himself— an idle, senseless, dumb drudge. How could they be expected to do more than just keep his worth less body and darkened soul together? And the epilogue— "He has been mad these twenty-three years!" The lingering years crept slowly by, whilst the wretched captive moaned and muttered away the hours of his youth. With no memories of the past to cheer, no means of speaking his wants, tied down for life by cruel chains, how could the poor wretch be anything but mad ? Was the advertisement successful? Did any take care to bring him "home?" How were they rewarded? Doubtless if he was recovered his "friends" chained him up again more securely than ever, and the poor dumb young man passed through his life as through a hideous nightmare.
How were patients treated when admitted to asylums? Let the following list of articles used at the Lancaster Asylum, as furnished to Dr. Tuke, suffice as an answer:—
1 cap with straps, 4 stocks to prevent biting, 2 muzzles (leather) to cover face and fasten at the back of the head, 10 leather gloves of various forms (perforated with holes) and cuffs of leather or iron, 14 double ditto with irons for wrists, 1 kicking shoe, 11 leather muffs with straps, 4 stout arm-leathers (long sleeves with closed ends) with crossbelt and chains, 8 heavy body straps with shoulder pieces, waistbelts, crossbelts, and pairs of handcuffs attached by short chains, 5 ditto of somewhat different make, 30 ditto, but with leather cuffs, 2 waist-straps with leather cuffs attached, nine pairs of leather cuffs padded, eleven pairs of leg-locks, a quantity of foot and hand cuffs (iron) with chains and catches to fasten to a staple in the wall or bedstead, twenty-one and a half pairs of padded leather handcuffs, a larger quantity of handcuffs, single and double of iron, twenty-two sets of strong body fastenings (very heavy chains covered with leather and iron handcuffs), a large quantity of broad leather straps, a bag of padlocks, keys for handcuffs, &c.

It would be beyond the limits of this article to describe the various attempts made to ameliorate the condition of the mentally diseased. From time to time earnest men passed Bills in the House of Commons, which had for their object some improvement in the treatment of the insane, but all, one after another, were rejected by the Lords Spiritual and Temporal. At last, in 1845, the Acts, which the present Earl of Shaftesbury numbers amongst his many benefactions to his country, and which have been well described as "the Magna Charta of the liberties of the Insane," passed both Houses, and received the Royal assent. From that time the record becomes steadily more satisfactory. The case of insane patients is nowadays undertaken by men who have made a special study of this branch of their profession. Doubtless there is yet much to learn, and none are more alive to this than those whose knowledge of the subject is greatest.
Enter a hospital for the insane now, and you may find patients playing cricket, or gardening, or reading. We began this article with a reference to Ned Ward's visit to Bedlam, and it may appropriately be concluded with an account of a visit paid one evening lately by the present writer to a Lunatic Asylum in one of the colonies. Come with him into a large, bright room. At one end of it stands a stage, ornamented gaily, and in the body of the hall are ranged a large audience. There are some curious faces there, and even the most thoughtless must feel that they are in presence of the saddest calamity that can befall mankind. On one side are the female patients dressed with becoming splendour, and many of them with bouquets in their hands for presentation to the performers. In the middle row are the parents and friends of the actors, and on the other side are the male patients. The orchestra strikes up, and the curtain is raised. Pretty girls and boys play their parts, and if there is not such high art as one may see in theatres at least there is more nature. A little fairy no higher than the table comes forward, dressed in the regulation wig and gown, and speaks the prologue, in which she reminds us of the lessons we learnt in our childhood, and then the dear old story " Beauty and the Beast" is set before us to the life. The unfortunate papa who speculates in gold-mining, the naughty girls who weep, the good "Beauty" who works, the beautiful Fairy Queen who metes out rewards and punishments with a charming grace, her sprightly attendants who sing and dance, and the ugly Beast who becomes a handsome prince— all are there before our very eyes. Then the cheers and the clapping, and the laughter, and the throwing of the bouquets, and the happy, happy faces of the patients make a picture which does not soon fade from the memory. All honour to those who undertake such a labour of love as this ; they have lifted a weary weight from many a stricken heart, and aided the recovery of many afflicted minds. One poor woman disturbed the harmony of the meeting at one time. Immediately a couple of pleasant-looking attendants came to her side and soothed her into quietness. Just think a minute. One short century ago, and those happy people would have been writhing almost or entirely naked in torments such as the Spanish Inquisition could hardly rival ; now they are sitting and clothed, and almost in their right mind.

South Australian Register 31 December 1884,