M+MH Traditional Approaches to Psychiatry

William Browne What asylums were are and ought to be 1837

* Asks what insanity is, says it is essentially impaired action of the mind and argues that it is a bodily disease, and should be considered through the relation of the brain to other organs of the body
* Asks what asylums are at the time of writing, gives examples of good and horrific examples
* Celebrates the fact that corporeal punishment had been abandoned but acknowledges it would be unwise to suggest there is no ill-treatment, discusses use of restraints and negligence of staff
* Case in Vienna of patients being kept in awful cold conditions
* Compares with a more positive example of Antwerp, where patients were boarded with peasants and their work was graded based on their abilities
* Criticises the lack of education of employees
* Talks about Bill proposed to parliament about the regulation of asylums, would give inquisitors power to visit asylums at night, says that despite the intentions of inquisitors, they were not capable of seeing more than the most glaring problems
* Says patients must be encouraged to live a ‘civilised’ life

John Connolly An Inquiry Concerning the Indications of Insanity 1830

* Talks about the experience of being diagnosed as mad, and about the danger that comes with the fact that the care of the mentally ill tends to be lucrative
* Says things are set in order for visits, and the same patients are presented to inspectors each year, getting worse every year until their death
* Talks about traditional approaches to the asylum, restraint shaving head
* Argues that this environment is harmful
* Pros and cons to confinement, bad towards end of illness

Peter Clark A Memoir of John Connolly 1869

* Found no evidence of their being a movement towards no restraints being used - many patients always in restraints
* Talks about how Connolly complained about the neglect of insanity in medical schools as a branch of medicine
* He began a course of clinical teaching at Hanwell in 1842
* In many cases it was not even a required branch of medical education

John Haslam Illustrations of Madness 1810

Gives details of the description given by Mr Matthews

* Patient believed that in some apartment near London Wall there was a gang of villains, who were skilled in pneumatic chemistry, who assailed him by means of ‘air loom’
* Main mode of communication between him and the gang ‘brain sayings’ - essentially sympathetic communications of thought, believed to be made possible because of the magnetic fluid present in both parties
* Also communicate with him through ‘voice-sayings’
* Part of their scheme is to make sure that no one knows about them
* Says there are similar gangs all over the city, outside most buildings of import - all of the govt. impregnated by gangs, influences all ministers of stateJohn

John Perceval A Narrative of the Treatment experienced by a gentleman during a state of mental derangement 1840

* In 1830 declined into Madness and records his treatment
* In the first asylum he was watched constantly and says that he went mad because he was treated as such and never left alone
* Says he was treated like an animal, restrained nearly all hours of the day in the same position
* Forced to have a clyster in front of his brother, angry that his brother allowed all of this to happen
* It was assumed that because he was mute that he was not aware and that his delicacy could not be offended
* Long term physical damaged caused by beatings
* At the second asylum, more beatings and never out of a strait jacket
* Had two operations forced on him without warning or consent