Cliapters in the RnglisJi Law of Lunacy.
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CHAPTERS IN THE ENGLISH LAW OF LUNACY. BY A. WOOD RENTON. I. REFORM IN ASYLUM ADMINISTRATION. IN common with all other European coun tries England has reached the present perfection of her system of asylum adminis tration by a long, a tedious, and a painful process. Visit one of her asylums now, and you will find a reign of order, harmony and peace; clean, airy, and well-aired and commodious wards,' trained attendants, skilled physicians, comfortable, if not al ways happy, patients, an alternation of work, rest and amusements, a scientific classification of the inmates according to the nature of their maladies, and a minute and regular, though somewhat complicated, system of government inspection in full operation. Little more than a century ago every item in this enumeration was reversed. Such asylums as existed were incommodi ous and unclean; their inmates were hud dled together without regard to age or the character of their ailment. No curative treatment was in force; the keepers were ignorant and brutal; the patients were sub jected to a regimen of " stripes, fetters and darkness," and the state was unaware of what was going on. The history of the change from this condition of affairs to the present one possesses entrancing interest for lawyers, medical men, and students of phi losophy and sociology alike. We propose to trace it in this paper. No one can read English or continental medico-legal literature from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century without being struck by the constant recurrence in its pages of several strange ideas with reference to the insane. One was that insanity is a mental disease alone. A second was that it was
absolutely incurable. A third was that it came as a visitation from God on babes for sin. It is not difficult to understand a priori the inferences which these postulates would suggest to those who were practically con cerned with the care and treatment of the insane. If lunacy was a mental disease only, if it could not be cured, if it was the outcome of Divine displeasure, there was no use in trying to cure it by ordinary patho logical remedies; indeed to attempt to do so would be to incur the guilt of endeavoring to frustrate the Almighty's purposes, and the duty of the Christian was to leave the unhappy non compos mentis to his punish ment, if not to aggravate it. When we turn from speculation and inference to history, we find these anticipations fulfilled to the letter. Instead of theorizing on the subject, let us take a few concrete instances of it, of which there is the highest authentication. They occur passim in the history of Bethlcm Hospital and the infamous York Asylum, whose stories are worthy of a digression. BETHLEM HOSPITAL ("BEDLAM").1
In 1247 Simon Fitz-Mary, an alderman and sheriff of London, granted to the Bishop and Church of the Order of St. Mary of Bethlem all his houses and grounds in the parish of St. Botolph, without Bishopsgate, to found a Priory. In 1330 the Priory erected on this site is described as a "Hospital " to collect alms in England, Wales and Ireland, but whether it was then used for the reception of the sick, or as a place of entertainment and shelter — a sense 1 For full information, see Hack Tukc's " History of the Insane in the British Isles."
