A HISTORY OF SCIENCE 



cell to which full daylight never penetrated; some- 

 times iron being expensive the chain was so short 

 that the wretched victim could not rise to the upright 

 posture or even shift his position upon his squalid 

 pallet of straw. 



In America, indeed, there being no Middle Age prece- 

 dents to crystallize into established customs, the treat- 

 ment accorded the insane had seldom or never sunk to 

 this level. Partly for this reason, perhaps, the work of 

 Dr. Rush at the Philadelphia Hospital, in 1784, by 

 means of which the insane came to be humanely treat- 

 ed, even to the extent of banishing the lash, has been 

 but little noted, while the work of the European lead- 

 ers, though belonging to later decades, has been made 

 famous. And perhaps this is not as unjust as it seems, 

 for the step which Rush took, from relatively bad to 

 good, was a far easier one to take than the leap from 

 atrocities to good treatment which the European re- 

 formers were obliged to compass. In Paris, for exam- 

 ple, Pinel was obliged to ask permission of the authori- 

 ties even to make the attempt at liberating the insane 

 from their chains, and, notwithstanding his recognized 

 position as a leader of science, he gained but grudging 

 assent, and was regarded as being himself little better 

 than a lunatic for making so manifestly unwise and 

 hopeless an attempt. Once the attempt had been 

 made, however, and carried to a successful issue, the 

 amelioration wrought in the condition of the insane 

 was so patent that the fame of Pinel' s work at the 

 Bictre and the Salpetriere went abroad apace. It 

 required, indeed, many years to complete it in Paris, 

 and a lifetime of effort on the part of Pinel' s pupil 



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