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Letter XIX. Mad-Houses.
I come now with pleasure, notwithstanding
the sadness of the subject, to an instance in which the application of the
principle will be of the lenient cast altogether: I mean that of of the melancholy
abodes appropriated to the reception of the insane. And here,
perhaps, a noble Lord now in administration might find some little
assistance lent, to the humane and salutary regulations for which we
are chiefly indebted to his case. (a)
Note (a) Lord Sydney
who in the House
of Commons
brought in the
Bill for the
regulation of
Mad-houses,
which afterwards
passed into an Act.
That any of the receptacles at present subsisting should
be pulld down, only to make room for others on the inspection principle,
is neither to be expected nor to be wished. But, should any buildings
that may be erected in future for this purpose, be made to receive the
inspection form, the object of such institutions could scarce fail of receiving
some share of its salutary influence. The powers of the insane, as well as those
of the wicked, are capable of being directed either against their fellow
creatures or against themselves. If, in the latter case nothing less than
perpetual chains should be availing, yet in all instances where only
the former danger is to be apprehended, separate cells, exposed, as in
the case of prisons to inspection, would render the use of chains and
other modes of corporal sufferance as unnecessary in this case as in any.
And with regard to the conduct of the keepers, and the need which
the patients have to be kept, the natural and not discommendable jealousy
of abuse would, in this instance as in the former ones, find a much readier
i
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