336 INSANITY. 



tiating the mild or non-restraint system of treatment for the 

 insane. 



The name of him who first proclaimed that insanity was a 

 misfortune, not a crime that scourges and attacks by savage 

 dogs were not befitting the attendants of a madhouse, was 

 Pinel, who entered on his duties at the Bicetre in 1792. 

 The affirmation of a principle was indeed laid down; but 

 vast subjects of political interest began to engross people's 

 minds. The humane or non-restraint system cannot be said 

 to have been fully acted upon in France until 1818. 



In this country we were slow to accept the foreign ame- 

 liorations. Although British madhouse attendants had never 

 been in the habit of groping along the wards accompanied 

 by savage dogs, yet whips were as ordinary an adjunct to 

 the attendants, as muskets to infantry, or sabres to hussars ; 

 nor were they seldom used. 



As is not unusual, the chief cause which brought about 

 amelioration of madhouse treatment was the culmination of 

 existing abuses to a point at which they challenged public 

 opinion. Certain enormities perpetrated within the walls of 

 the York Asylum led to investigation; investigation to a 

 disclosure of horrors that the mind of an examiner now fails 

 to realise. 



When the fact is stated, that within the torture walls of 

 this institution several insane people died, no traces of them 

 ever having been discovered, the gravest suspicions will arise 

 concerning their mode of disposal. The end of this insti- 

 tution was worthy the iniquitous system under which it had 

 been conducted. 



A dishonest secretary set fire to the building, hoping 

 thereby to destroy the books, examination of which might, 

 by their omissions, stand up in silent accusation. A public 

 scandal followed greater than any which had preceded. An 

 inmate, a member of the Society of Friends, sent to that 

 institution in 1791, had been subject to gross ill-treatment. 



