The Institutional Care Of The Insane In The United States And Canada

Author : William Francis Drewry
Publisher : Theclassics.Us
ISBN 13 : 9781230436418
Total Pages : 174 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (364 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book The Institutional Care of the Insane in the United States and Canada Volume 1 written by William Francis Drewry and published by Theclassics.Us. This book was released on 2013-09 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1916 edition. Excerpt: ... advocates. He recognized with some surprise the greater quiet of the European institutions as compared with those of the United States and ascribes it to the fact that the inmates were from the pauper class, a class entirely unknown in the United States. " We have no poor," he says, " supported by public charity. What I mean is that our poverty is a casual condition, a temporary misfortune, the result of accident, disease or mischance, and dies out with its unfortunate subject." He believed that the poor patient in the American asylums is by nature fresh and buoyant, with his energies in full vigor, and that consequently, when put into an institution he became restless, uneasy and anxious to be relieved of all personal restraint. While there may be some weight in Ray's argument, it is evident that he did not approach the subject with a wholly unbiased mind and was inclined to defend the use of restraint in America as more or less a matter of patriotism. It is evident, however, that, as the result of discussions appearing in many of the annual reports of superintendents of institutions for the insane, a feeling grew up that mechanical restraint was a curative agency, the use of which, though it might be abused, was preferable, in spite of its faults, to its entire abandonment. Another element in the increased use of mechanical restraint was undoubtedly the fact that institutions grew and enlarged beyond the original intention of those in charge of them. The superintendent's time and energies were claimed not only by his professional duties but by others of a non-professional character, such as the care of the farm, the kitchen and the laundry, to say nothing of numberless outside affairs which devolved upon him because of his prominence...