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Excerpt from The Popular Feeling Towards Hospitals for the Insane
Whatever reason may exist against the introduction of visitors to the galleries, may be urged with tenfold force' against the admission of the domestics. In short, I do\ dot see how~ the peace and order of an establishment can be maintained a single day, if the employees of every description are to be constantly mixed up together, to idle away their time, to circulate gossip, and partici pate in one another's bickerings and dissensions.
In every institution, I presume, there may be found practices which are connected with some peculiar views or system of the superintendent, that cannot fairly be tested by any conventional notions of propriety. There may be, therefore, some reason for the somewhat preva lent practice of allowing patients, both male and female, to leave the wing at their pleasure, and have free access to the centre-house andgrounds, where they roam about at will, but to me it seems to be subversive ofall discipline, as well as of that privacy and seclusion which are supposed to be necessary to the restoration of the disordered mind, as I am sure they are to the maintenance of that kind of propriety which regards every unnecessary exposure of the insane as an unnecessary evil. The only benefit I have ever heard claimed for the practice, that of making patients more contented, because less restricted by locks and bolts, I have thought more fanciful than real, and at best I doubt if enough is gained by it to compensate for the real mischief that must arise from it. I see not how we can pretend to rely on moral treatment in the work of restoration, while we expose our patients every hour to such communications as they may receive from do mestics and visitors.
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