THE COLNEY HATCH ASYLUM.

348

dwellings fit for human habitation. One committee Chairman of the Visiting Justices of this asylum did not refer may endeavour to follow the suggestion of the Board of Trade, to the treatment itself, but to the fact of its not having been and may possibly succeed in doing so ; another committee may recorded by me in my journal. Being very exceptional treatmake the attempt honestly, but languidly or inexpertly, and ment, no doubt it should have been so recorded. But I wish to draw attention to the inaccurate idea which fail ; and a third may not choose to make the attempt at all. I know that Mr. Hughes entertained the hope that the pro- is conveyed by the expression " method of treatment," as immoters of metropolitan lines would consent to the conditions plying an active adoption of a certain course rather than a he desired to impose. But general offers of readiness to do passive submission to a state of things which is not to be what is reasonable are far from equivalent in practice to a avoided, except by the substitution of another state of things legal obligation. I own I am very sceptical about the value of infinitely worse, because absolutely cruel. If nakedness is vague promises or undertakings given under such circumstances. the measure of a man’s unhappiness, then the Editor of THE How is it that in no one instance has reparation or restoration LANCET is right ; and all the processes of restraint-but the been made where demolition was wide, and the number of other day so justly declaimed against-should be brought into families unroofed and sent adrift unhappily large ? operation in order to provide an artificial covering for these I am more deeply persuaded every day that the evils of destructive patients. But, Sir, I take leave to say that if you had seen what I overcrowding are not to be checked or mitigated effectually without some general enactment of a comprehensive and com- have seen-if you had any knowledge of the preternatural pulsory kind. I am not vain enough to think the Bill I have heat of skin in nineteen out of twenty destructive lunaticsreintroduced free from defects. I offer it only for what it is you would begin to entertain some doubts as to whether the worth, sincerely wishing that somebody may produce a more soft and unirritating wrapping of a temperate atmosphere was perfect plan. But until a better shall have been proposed I not " the proper measure"-" the best method of treatment." trust that you will continue to lend your powerful advocacy in These poor creatures are only satisfied when they have freed favour of that which stands for second reading on the 27th themselves from every sort of fettering and placed themselves inst., and which, if adopted in anything like its present form, in a condition analogous to that which you or 1 should occupy in the hot chamber of a Turkish bath. Where the preterI believe, accomplish much good. would, T r ,.._." +... ,...",..r +,. ." c;...."r ",o,a;o"+ co.....,r+ natural heat to which I allude does not exist, the sensations W. T. M. TORRENS. are ordinarily deadened, and there is greater need for some St. George’s-road, March 6th, 1867. artificial covering, even at the partial sacrifice of freedom. But where it does exist and is persistent, that treatment is surely THE COLNEY HATCH ASYLUM. very unscientific which cannot fail to aggravate the evil. It To the Editor of THE LANCET. may be difficult to make you or the public see this. Even the Commissioners in Lunacy do not see it. And a concession read a the have sensational comSIR,-You story-having must be made to public opinion, and to those who expound mason accuracy of sensational stories-in a newspaper, and upon it-the variance with honest convictions and experi. that you write an article seriously affecting me and the insti- mental press,-at teaching. tution to which I am attached. This is not fair-nay, it is After the attack which you have made upon me (and I do very unjust. I do not shrink from legitimate criticism ; and not impugn your motives, although you say " motives are I know enough of life and the prevailing order of things to I beside the question") I have a right to ask space for an ex. be sure that every public officer is jealously watched and tract from my Report to the Visiting Justices upon the matter has elicited your criticism; for it is right that you guarded by the community and the press. It is one of the which know that it is not a part of my administration here to pains and penalties inseparable from our position, which I for should one do not find fault with. But a public servant has a right do things recklessly and without consideration. Those who to complain of untruthful statements, of exaggerations, of know me best will testify that I have laboured here for more than five years to raise the character and ameliorate the con. misrepresentations, of inaccuracies. On these grounds I take exception to what you have said dition of this asylum-with what success let the annual reo about me in your journal of the 9th inst., and express my ports of the Visiting Justices and the official entries of the in Lunacv testifv. regret that you did not think it worth while, in a matter of so Commissioners 66I have already explained to you (the Visiting Justices of much importance, to obtain one of the last Colney-hatch Asylum), by word of mouth, that the patients in whom reports, and carefully read it, before you committed yourself the to the article of which I justly complain. Had you done this, the destructive propensity usually manifests itself are, for the there would have been no occasion for me to place side by side most part, of the class termed general paralytics ; that their physical sensations and perceptions are impaired or annihi. ’Your fiction and mv facts. lated ; that they besmear themselves with their own filth; Sensational statement (sic) in Absolute facts as recorded in the that their skins are of an unnaturally high temperature; that THE LANCET. last Asylum Report. their delusions are of the grand and extravagant kind; that " The statement made by "Daniel Hobbs was ad- they will stand or sit the whole of the night naked, with their Mr. Pownall, and admitted to mitted into the asylum on bedding and clothes heaped in one corner of the room, singing, be true by Dr. Sheppard, me- April 21st, 1864, and died on laughing, gesticulating, and giving every evidence of their dical superintendent of the the 27th of June in the same own happiness. The only thing which robs them of their Colney-hatch Asylum, was to year; so that he was an inmate pleasurable sensations is restraint. This is why I do not practhe effect that a patient named here for a period of only 67 tise it. I have gloved a patient at night to prevent destrucHarrison was put into a room days. He was not placed in tiveness, but the result has never been satisfactory. The upon bare boards, within brick his room more than 4 nights wrists have been galled by the ceaseless efforts of the patient walls, without either clothes out of 67, and this in conse- to free himself, and if he has not destroyed his rugs, he has - or bedding; that Hobbs, anquence of great destructive- not used them. The lunatics of an earlier day were chained other patient, was similarly ness, which I had no means of and manacled-not so much for their violence as their destrucimmured for 140 nights during controlling but by restraint- tiveness. They had straw to lie upon ; and I believe that the the winter, and died one morn- a measure which I do not ap- playing with the straw was to them a source of infinite amuseing soon after being let out; prove of except for surgical ment-better for them to spend their uncontrollable energies and that such treatment is purposes. But it is certain upon than strong rugs and ticken frocks. The question, then, really is-How are these cases of generally adopted in cases that during his residence in where the patients habitually the asylum, although (with destructiveness to be managed ? The worst subjects of this destroy their bedding and the exception of the four nights propensity will destroy padded rooms ; shirts and blankets .clothing, and even the lining alluded to) he had coverings and strong rugs they rip to shreds, and have only their full of padded rooms." and bedding of the ordinary measure of satisfaction when they have reduced themselves to kind, or strong rugs only, he a state of complete nudity. To gag the mouth, to fasten down was always in a state of nuthe arms, to glove the hands, is at once to distress the patient, dity-that is to say, he was and substitute a restraint which is intensely irritating for a actually in the same condition freedom which, though seeming to result in a state of things as if he had been placed in his which shocks philanthropy, involves no sort of unhappiness or room without any clothing suffering. This is a conviction which has been forced upon " whatever. my mind by visiting patients of the kind described at all hours A further perusal of our last would have told of the night, and conversing with them upon those imaginary you that the "great error in judgment" admitted by the pleasures with which their minds are occupied, and by which

want of

annual report

349

they are happily blinded to a sense of their own physical degradation. And this is why I have occasionally sanctioned I the withdrawal from a patient of his bedding and clothing at i one of those periods when his destructiveness has reached its to see the county prohighest point. I have been unwilling perty destroyed night after night, for no sort of purpose.

any one of the

lenged by

magistrates present,

was

tacitly

the chairman of the Colney-hatch Asylum, and until now has not been denied. The severe language of Mr. Pownall, the rebuke of the Commissioners in Lunacy, and our comments, are therefore not justly describecl as founded upon "fiction" or "sensational stories." We much fear that Dr. Sheppard is more wedded to his opinion than we could have thought possible, as we now find him publicly defending the treatment we impugned. We believe Dr. Sheppard, however well-meaning, to be wrong, and his treatment. of patients who destroy their clothes and bedding to have been entirely mistaken. The Committee of Colney-hatch seem toa agree with us, as they undertake, through their chairman, that no similar treatment shall occur again. We print Dr. Sheppard’s ill-advised letter, but we regret to find it proves that the superintendent of the principal Lunatic Asylum of has adopted views as to the proper treatment of his patients not in concurrence with those advocated by his. professional brethren, and which appear to us as well as to the Commissioners in Lunacy inconsistent with the modern and more enlightened system of treating mental disease.-ED. L.

admitted

by Mr. Wyatt,

"In the interview which I had with the Commissioners in I on the 18th of June, I invited them to give me some suggestions as to the manner of treating such cases as those now under consideration. They say that for patients to be in rooms without bedding or clothing is unheard of in this philanthropic age, and that such circumstances admit of no sort of justification. But it must be known to any Commissioner who has been a superintendent of an asylum of any magnitude that numberless patients are uncovered the whole night—that they will stand up naked or lie upon the bare floor, having heaped their bedding and clothing into one corner of the room, or amused themselves by tearing it to pieces. They condition for themselves, unconsciously, the very surroundings of only seeming discomfort, which have been very rarely and exceptionally ordered in cases of extreme destructiveness. The two states are absolutely identical." Let me beg of you, as the editor of a scientific journal of wide repute, in any reply which you may make to these remarks, to approach the subject in a calm and dispassionate spirit. Do not permit yourself to be hounded-on by a sensational cry, worthy only of the penny-a-liners who scribble for THE FACTORIES BILL. effect and for sale, recklessly indifferent to facts, and supremely of the character of those about whom write. To the Editor of THE LANCET. regardless they If you cannot embrace the theory which I advance, if you do SIR,-With reference to that part of the article in yournot believe it to be sound, I would invite you to meet me in of the 9th inst. on the Factory Acts which relates. the hot chamber of a Turkish bath, either here or in London, impression to the mortality among the grinders, may I ask if it would be where, when your skin has reached that abnormal temperature impracticable to obviate the mischief by separating the mewhich, unrelieved by perspiration, is distress, I will clothe you chanics from the grinding-wheel by means of a partition, with in a ticken dress, lined with flannel, and laced up behind. a glass window inserted to see through, and apertures for theYour case will then exa.ctlvrcDreaMit the nrmditinn of ma.nv dearms ?-the partition to go from floor to roof. or of some even in the first of structive general T Cir yours obediently acute mania, minus the hyperassthesia which is so often superWALTER LATTEY. March 13th, 1867. Southam, added to the lunatic, and renders clothing insufferable. You will then learn for the first time the difference between freedom and restraint. Your next leading article upon this subject will be less enthusiastic, and less tinged with that large and spirit of pseudo - philanthropy which made you indignant speak of a return to barbarism and of things unworthy, in your judgment, of a scientific age. You will stand convicted, HOUSE OF COMMONS. having passed through the fiery ordeal of experimental sufMARCH 6TH.

Lunacy

Middlesex

paralytics,

stage

am

Parliamentary Intelligence.

fering.

SANITARY STATE OF HOLYHEAD. I am as persuaded of this as I can be of the truth of any facts which I have learned by observation and by personal MR. WALPOLE, in reply to Mr. O. Stanley, said that Dr, experience. If I am compelled to yield to public clamour, and Buchanan’s report of the sanitary state of Holyhead would be’ to the requirements of legitimate supervisors appointed by the published in the Report of the Medical Department of the State, I do not alter my opinion as to the merits of what I Privy Council, and need not, therefore, be printed separately.. propose. I am satisfied that the proper treatment for such CHOLERA. cases as those we have been considering is, a clothing most In to Sir J. C. Jervoise, Mr. WALPOLE said he could. reply suited to hyperæsthesia and to preternatural dermal heat, undertake to say whether Dr. Frankland’s report on. not combined with a freedom without which there can be no apwas scientifically true. The Regischolera-stuff proach to the soothing and the palliative. Such a clothing (as trar-General (cholerine) had published it in his appendix to his Weekly I said before) is the soft and yielding atmosphere of a tembelieving it to be a valuable document, emanating as. perate chamber, whose wrappings are appreciated though Return, it did from so high an authority as Dr. Frankland, and as unseen, and whose freedom is the very perfection of its tending to put the public on their guard in dealing with what adaptiveness. If medical sunerintendents do not know this. I am much were supposed to be cholera cases. He was not aware that mistaken. If the practical and working members of the the Government intended to introduce any Bill on the subject. Sir J. C. JERVOISE asked the Vice-President of the ComLunacy Commission do not know it, I am mistaken likewise. mittee of Council on Education whether his attention hadIt is one thing, however, to know, and another to do. I am the first medical superintendent who has dared to give official been called to the report of the medical officer of the Privy sanction to that which is not to be avoided but by the substi- Council (1866), in which he states, pp. 39-40, the mode in. tution of something which, while it may meet the clamorous which cholera-contagium is generated; whether the discoverer’ has divulged his method of obtaining this deadly agent ; and, requirements of public opinion, does not meet the pressing if not, why not; and whether the annual report of the medineeds of personal suffering. In conclusion, I would beg of you to ask any of the Middle- cal officer, which was not accessible to members till towards. the end of July in the last, will be so at an early period of sex magistrates whom you may happen to know, and who were session. this, present at the Court when Mr. Pownall made his attack upon Mr. CoRRY said the statement referred to was not due to. me, what was the impression left upon their mind after they any single discoverer, but was the result of scientific investiheard Mr. Wyatt’s reply and explanation. gation by many competent authorities. With regard to the I am, Sir, your obedient servant, annual report, a great deal of extra labour had been cast upon EDGAR SHEPPARD, M.D. Colney Hatch, March 10th, 1867. the medical officer by the cholera outbreak of last summer, and he could not, therefore, hold out the expectation that it °, The statement in THE LANCET quoted by Dr. and referred to by him as "untruthful" and " inaccurate," is, would be presented much earlier than it was last year. as he must be aware, taken almost word for word from MARCH 8TH. The Times report of Mr. Pownall’s speech at the opening of METROPOLITAN POOR BILL. the Middlesex Sessions; its substantial truth was not chal-!I, The House went into Committee on this Bill. ,

Sheppard,