Twentieth annual report of the Suffolk Lunatic Asylum : December, 1857.

  • Suffolk Lunatic Asylum.
Date:
[1858]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Twentieth annual report of the Suffolk Lunatic Asylum : December, 1857. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    S' Now it may be remembered that reference was made in the report last year, to the vast improvement in our own bed¬ rooms by the removal of many of the heavy iron windows, and the substitution of others of a lighter and less formidable construction. At the last visit of the Commissioners in Lunacy they urged the extension of this change throughout the House. The improvement in appearance gives quite a different character to the Building; and those visitors (now only too few) who remember it nearly thirty years ago, are struck with the salutary importance of the alteration : and we trust that with the additional comfort of papered rooms, we have secured in some measure the combined advantages of better light from the windows, and cheerfulness from the walls. All that encourages cheerfulness locally is valuable,, and the true and natural method for the improvement of the patients’ condition., is the encouragement of innocent amuse¬ ments to beget that cheerfulness; attractive objects, animate and inanimate, birds, animals, pictures, &c. to lead them from their wandering thoughts : not omitting the example of sterling morality to ensure future stability of character. The introduction of children into the female departments has been said in some instances to have been attended with advantage, and the lisp of infants been added to the songs of birds, under that poetically utopian idea. Many of the females with us have dolls in their rooms which they dress and undress with imaginary maternal care. Our treatment in asylums may partake too much of class treatment, too little of individuality. There is often a stiff formality observable where all sit like school children, there¬ by unenviably raising the Medical Officer to the likeness of a schoolmaster, and the only indications of convalescence in his patients, are supposed to be the unbended back, and the pad-locked lip. Loud discourse is not inconsistent with order. In some recent suggestions there seems to be an apparent for¬ getfulness of the truth recognized by all sound authority, that