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Life of Thomas Eddy

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Retreat at York, where the number of recoveries was greater when well directed medical discipline was united to moral means of relief; at the asylum at Glasgow, and at La Sal Petrierie, Charanton, France, under the direction of M. Pinel, the first among the moderns for adopting the moral system; while, on the other hand, in Holland, where through a mistaken belief that the maniac is unsusceptible of mental enjoyment, and that insanity is deemed an intractable disorder, no curative measures were employed, and of consequence, recovery was protracted and indeed rarely took place.*Some of the abuses which I witnessed in Holland, in the treatment of the insane, were scarcely inferior in their enormity, to those of the metropolitan Bethlehem Hospital, as brought to light by parliamentary investigation. I hardly know whether the memorable case of William Norris surpassed in cruelty an example which presented itself to me of an aged male adult, who had been manacled and confined for some twelve years, under circumstances of suffer-ings, privations, and tortures, a parallel to which Mr. Haslam alone could pro-bably supply. Other cases of a like character I might detail as specimens of the practice of that country. Doubtless, the treatment of insanity has been more humanely regarded in Holland, as well as elsewhere, within the past fif-teen or sixteen years. The evidence deduced from truths of this nature, and the con-stantly accumulating proofs in behalf of medical treatment which modern experience supplied, doubtless had their influence in caus-ing Mr. Eddy several years before his death, to adopt the opinion that the proper administration of medicinal agents, was favoura-ble to the treatment of insanity; nay, oftentimes indispensable. There is another circumstance I can hardly allow to be passed over on this occasion without a remark, and which I think has been a concurring cause of the too hasty and too general adop-tion of moral management, as of itself alone the essential means of cure of maniacal subjects. The delirium of inebriety, and the more advanced forms of diseased action denominated delirium tremens, have inadvertently been confounded with idiopathic mania; and inasmuch as the right use of reason is for the most part, in those cases, soon restored by mere abstraction from noxious potation, which is effectually secured by confinement, moral management, without other aid, has been allowed an undue weight in the curative process of genuine mania. I am aware that permanent cerebral disorganization may arise from intem-