300
Aut. IX.?dr. bucknill and private asylums.
plentiful disquisitions on the subject of private recently been supplemented by a asylums volume* containing the fulminations contributed by him on the same subject to the pages of the British Medical Journal The style and in the form of a series of sensational articles. contents of these articles make it highly probable that they will commend themselves to that mysterious being, the Englishman of average intelligencethey are eminently adapted to appeal to the mind that accepts obfuscation for illumination; and especially do they deserve commendation for the remarkable skill they display in presenting actual facts in that imaginative manner that is so well calculated to mislead the unreasoning and uninformed members of the reading public. It is impossible, of course, to assume that Dr. Bucknill is ignorant of the arrangements common to private lunatic asylums, but his remarks must cause some amusement to those who are familiar with the subject on which he writes. The average intellect is, unfortunately, little prone to examine assertions laid before it with the air of authority, and cannot fail to be impressed with the statements of a writer who ventures to address a popular audience on a subject of vital importance, of which, however, he only shows the side to which his own sympathies are inclined. In the Care of the Insane this is just the fault of which our author has been guilty; he has, Dr. Bucknill's
for the insane have
"
"
"
moreover, seen fit to pursue a method of demonstration calculated to inflame the senses of his readers, without at the same time affording any accounts on which a correct judgment concerning the data to be considered is alone possible. He is an excellent partisan, but with the zealous vehemence of every defender of a crotchet, he resolves lustily to combat the evils his own indefatigable fancy has enabled him to create. For a in Visitor series of as long Lunacy, Dr. Chancery years, Bucknill enjoyed the fullest opportunities of witnessing the progress of improvement in the institutions into which, in his official capacity, he always possessed a right of entry. It is, therefore, a strange persistence in error that can admit of his being still in a position of such absolute darkness, as his last book proves he must be, regarding the merits of the institutions on which he showers such wholesale condemnation. The work itself, when submitted to careful examination, is at once seen to be a reflex of long pent up desire to reconstitute *
E.R.S.
On the Care of the Insane, and their Legal Control, London, 1880. Macmillan & Co.
by
J. C. Bucknill, M.D.,
DR.
BUCKNILL AND PRIVATE ASYLUMS.
301
system in which its author professes to feel no confidence, and which desire he even admits to be the ruling motive of his attack. It is as well, therefore, to analyse in brief detail the charges he brings against private asylums, in substantiation of his demand for their universal suppression in their present form, and the establishment of State institutions for the treatment of insane persons. It should be carefully noted that Dr. Bucknill makes an accommodating reservation to the effect that medical men may, even after the realisation of his ideal arrangements, continue to have charge of one, two, or a
at most
three, private patients.
This
extraordinary suggestion
?extraordinary, when the prime cause of offence against licensed proprietors is the unfounded supposition that they may, under the influence of the auri sacra fames, be induced to unduly detain their inmates?is the most illogical and inconsiderate that could have been made, as it is open to the objection persistently urged against the present system. priori the inducement to keep one or two high-paying patients is infinitely greater than the temptation to detain even a larger number where the average profit derivable from each is less. Dr. Bucknill, in fact, in his devotion to a single idea has unconsciously strayed into numberless bye-paths, not only of error, but of inconsistency also. There is, however, no ground for the language he employs in respect of the improper detention of lunatics in private asylums. Dr. Bucknill cannot be ignorant that the owner of a licensed institution is as powerless as Dr. Bucknill himself now is, to withhold a patient's liberty for one single day. His concealment of facts that would influence the judgment of the reader whose information is gathered from his pages alone, cannot, we think, be justified on any grounds. The Commissioners in Lunacy, the Visiting Justices of the Peace, the Local Gruardians, are likely at any time to inspect unannounced, and without intimation, every institution where same
A
a lunatic is under confinement; what chance then is there for a licensee to hoodwink all or any of those authorities in respect of his charges, especially since the latter are all freely in communication with the inspectors for the whole period of their visit ? We do not care to deal with Dr. Bucknill's insinuations against the bona fides of proprietors ; but it may be said of them that they are at best but an ungrateful reflection on the discrimination of the authorities to whom the aspersed class owe their appointment to the positions they hold. The question of acts of violence inflicted on patients is dealt with in a way that leaves it doubtful whether our author is under the impression that bruised bodies and broken limbs are the usual concomitants of treatment in private asylums, his
302
DR. BUCKNILL AND PRIVATE ASYLUMS. "
"
house and asylum being well calculated to leave an unfavourable impression in the mind of the uninformed reader. Proceeding from this, he gives his opinion, that the home treatment of lunatics is often likely to he fraught with benefit to them, but with the strange tendency to forgetfulness of his premisses we have before alluded to, he insists on " medical treatment" as a distinctive feature in the cure of every case. The superior efficiency of public asylums on which Dr. Bucknill has so long insisted with all the energetic utterance of an enthusiast, is a figment of his excited imagination, rather than a probable, or even possible, truth. The associations of a Government institution are rarely, even under the most prepossessing appearances of more than a prison cheerfulness ; and how the benignant influences that largely enter into the conception of Dr. Bucknill's lunatics' paradise, are to be resolved out of the concomitants of the routine existence of a state prisoner controlled by uninterested, salaried officials, it is not possible to understand. Officialism in any form is fatal to mental quietude; the constant presence of the signs and symbols indicative of incarceration, are the most to be regretted of all the hindrances to recovery in the county asylums of to-day; and every visitor to a private retreat at once appreciates the kindly influence of the homely surroundings amid which the patients pass a contented, and often even happy period of their existence. By sweeping away the personal interest of a superintendent in those under his care, and merging it in that which is demanded simply as an official duty, we shall lose a prominent, and, as the Commissioners readily admit, fruitful means of ameliorating the painful state in which patients are committed to seclusion. Dr. Bucknill's estimate of the matter he reviews, however, takes no cognisance of these important details. Private asylums are to him private enterprises, and nothing more ; and as such he seeks for their abolition : because they, do not accord with his ideas, firstly and chiefly, and secondly and lastly, because he charges them with being the scenes of irregularities and improprieties, no single one of which, that is important, does he succeed in exposing. Sensationally headed leading articles will not lead the public astray; and Dr. Bucknill would have been wiser to base his statements on something more stable than innuendo and imagination. We object to his attempt, not on its own account simply; it has a raison d'etre, appreciable to all acquainted with the history and present aspect of lunacy in this country ; but we do emphatically complain that one who is recognised as some authority in the matter, should thus unfoundedly asperse a beneficent system to the English public.
Aut. IX.?dr. bucknill and private asylums.
plentiful disquisitions on the subject of private recently been supplemented by a asylums volume* containing the fulminations contributed by him on the same subject to the pages of the British Medical Journal The style and in the form of a series of sensational articles. contents of these articles make it highly probable that they will commend themselves to that mysterious being, the Englishman of average intelligencethey are eminently adapted to appeal to the mind that accepts obfuscation for illumination; and especially do they deserve commendation for the remarkable skill they display in presenting actual facts in that imaginative manner that is so well calculated to mislead the unreasoning and uninformed members of the reading public. It is impossible, of course, to assume that Dr. Bucknill is ignorant of the arrangements common to private lunatic asylums, but his remarks must cause some amusement to those who are familiar with the subject on which he writes. The average intellect is, unfortunately, little prone to examine assertions laid before it with the air of authority, and cannot fail to be impressed with the statements of a writer who ventures to address a popular audience on a subject of vital importance, of which, however, he only shows the side to which his own sympathies are inclined. In the Care of the Insane this is just the fault of which our author has been guilty; he has, Dr. Bucknill's
for the insane have
"
"
"
moreover, seen fit to pursue a method of demonstration calculated to inflame the senses of his readers, without at the same time affording any accounts on which a correct judgment concerning the data to be considered is alone possible. He is an excellent partisan, but with the zealous vehemence of every defender of a crotchet, he resolves lustily to combat the evils his own indefatigable fancy has enabled him to create. For a in Visitor series of as long Lunacy, Dr. Chancery years, Bucknill enjoyed the fullest opportunities of witnessing the progress of improvement in the institutions into which, in his official capacity, he always possessed a right of entry. It is, therefore, a strange persistence in error that can admit of his being still in a position of such absolute darkness, as his last book proves he must be, regarding the merits of the institutions on which he showers such wholesale condemnation. The work itself, when submitted to careful examination, is at once seen to be a reflex of long pent up desire to reconstitute *
E.R.S.
On the Care of the Insane, and their Legal Control, London, 1880. Macmillan & Co.
by
J. C. Bucknill, M.D.,
DR.
BUCKNILL AND PRIVATE ASYLUMS.
301
system in which its author professes to feel no confidence, and which desire he even admits to be the ruling motive of his attack. It is as well, therefore, to analyse in brief detail the charges he brings against private asylums, in substantiation of his demand for their universal suppression in their present form, and the establishment of State institutions for the treatment of insane persons. It should be carefully noted that Dr. Bucknill makes an accommodating reservation to the effect that medical men may, even after the realisation of his ideal arrangements, continue to have charge of one, two, or a
at most
three, private patients.
This
extraordinary suggestion
?extraordinary, when the prime cause of offence against licensed proprietors is the unfounded supposition that they may, under the influence of the auri sacra fames, be induced to unduly detain their inmates?is the most illogical and inconsiderate that could have been made, as it is open to the objection persistently urged against the present system. priori the inducement to keep one or two high-paying patients is infinitely greater than the temptation to detain even a larger number where the average profit derivable from each is less. Dr. Bucknill, in fact, in his devotion to a single idea has unconsciously strayed into numberless bye-paths, not only of error, but of inconsistency also. There is, however, no ground for the language he employs in respect of the improper detention of lunatics in private asylums. Dr. Bucknill cannot be ignorant that the owner of a licensed institution is as powerless as Dr. Bucknill himself now is, to withhold a patient's liberty for one single day. His concealment of facts that would influence the judgment of the reader whose information is gathered from his pages alone, cannot, we think, be justified on any grounds. The Commissioners in Lunacy, the Visiting Justices of the Peace, the Local Gruardians, are likely at any time to inspect unannounced, and without intimation, every institution where same
A
a lunatic is under confinement; what chance then is there for a licensee to hoodwink all or any of those authorities in respect of his charges, especially since the latter are all freely in communication with the inspectors for the whole period of their visit ? We do not care to deal with Dr. Bucknill's insinuations against the bona fides of proprietors ; but it may be said of them that they are at best but an ungrateful reflection on the discrimination of the authorities to whom the aspersed class owe their appointment to the positions they hold. The question of acts of violence inflicted on patients is dealt with in a way that leaves it doubtful whether our author is under the impression that bruised bodies and broken limbs are the usual concomitants of treatment in private asylums, his
302
DR. BUCKNILL AND PRIVATE ASYLUMS. "
"
house and asylum being well calculated to leave an unfavourable impression in the mind of the uninformed reader. Proceeding from this, he gives his opinion, that the home treatment of lunatics is often likely to he fraught with benefit to them, but with the strange tendency to forgetfulness of his premisses we have before alluded to, he insists on " medical treatment" as a distinctive feature in the cure of every case. The superior efficiency of public asylums on which Dr. Bucknill has so long insisted with all the energetic utterance of an enthusiast, is a figment of his excited imagination, rather than a probable, or even possible, truth. The associations of a Government institution are rarely, even under the most prepossessing appearances of more than a prison cheerfulness ; and how the benignant influences that largely enter into the conception of Dr. Bucknill's lunatics' paradise, are to be resolved out of the concomitants of the routine existence of a state prisoner controlled by uninterested, salaried officials, it is not possible to understand. Officialism in any form is fatal to mental quietude; the constant presence of the signs and symbols indicative of incarceration, are the most to be regretted of all the hindrances to recovery in the county asylums of to-day; and every visitor to a private retreat at once appreciates the kindly influence of the homely surroundings amid which the patients pass a contented, and often even happy period of their existence. By sweeping away the personal interest of a superintendent in those under his care, and merging it in that which is demanded simply as an official duty, we shall lose a prominent, and, as the Commissioners readily admit, fruitful means of ameliorating the painful state in which patients are committed to seclusion. Dr. Bucknill's estimate of the matter he reviews, however, takes no cognisance of these important details. Private asylums are to him private enterprises, and nothing more ; and as such he seeks for their abolition : because they, do not accord with his ideas, firstly and chiefly, and secondly and lastly, because he charges them with being the scenes of irregularities and improprieties, no single one of which, that is important, does he succeed in exposing. Sensationally headed leading articles will not lead the public astray; and Dr. Bucknill would have been wiser to base his statements on something more stable than innuendo and imagination. We object to his attempt, not on its own account simply; it has a raison d'etre, appreciable to all acquainted with the history and present aspect of lunacy in this country ; but we do emphatically complain that one who is recognised as some authority in the matter, should thus unfoundedly asperse a beneficent system to the English public.
