Pinel is watching while the insane are
being freed from their shackles
(1790’s).
Notice the woman’s “receiving”
posture She only needs raising her arms
to look like the Statue of Liberty.
Liberal ideals
Absolute monarchy came to an end, and a middle-class started to emerge. A liberal humanly attitude found the miserable conditions for the insane to be unacceptable. At the same time psychiatry was becoming a science in itself. Insanity should now be treated – possibly cured.
Freedom and insanity
The great French Revolution 1789 led to a clash with the old hospital system which poor and ill persons had just been crammed into. Following the Human Right Declaration, it was deemed unworthy that insane persons were put in chains, such as it has been practised in the big asylums such as ”Salpêtrière” and ”Bicetre”.
Institutions for mentally ill
The physician Philipe Pinel, who was an avid supporter of the ideas of the revolution, advocated that there should be created organized asylums where the insane could be treated on a scientific basis and in a social and moral context. Pinel was praised – rightly – to have ”liberated the insane from their shackles.”
J.E.D. Esquirol,
French psychiatrist, 1772-1840
The picture shows an angry
American sailor, James Norris,
chained in his cell in “Bedlam
Hospital”. The drawing was
published in1815 as an
illustration dealing with
scandal around the hospital.
Norris was kept like this for
nine years. The iron shackles
weighed almost 15 kilos and
made room for very little
movements. Norris died in
1816, shortly after his release.
Esquirol
Esquirol continued the psychiatric reform movement after Pinel. He took special interest in the lives of the patients. He was engaged in hospital construction and prison reforms. Esquirol took among others part in planning the establishment of the asylum in Schleswig and advocated that criminals in some respects could be suffering from mental illnesses.
Plan and reality
There was however far between the big reform plans and their implementation. In 1818 Esquirol reported following:” I saw the mentally ill naked or covered with rags with nothing else but straw to protect themselves against cold and humidity. I saw how miserably bad they were fed, lacking water and all of life’s necessities. I saw them lay chained in narrow, damp dirty small rooms where you would be ashamed to confine wild animals ... like this the mentally ill were treated almost all over Europe. ”
The psychiatric reform movement
Doctor William Battie who was the head of the “Bedlam Hospital” suggested in 1750 that an institution was formed that aimed to cure insanity, besides being a place for training of specialists. His thesis, “A Treatise on Madness” from 1758 can be described as the first textbook of psychiatry. Battie got his model hospital “St. Luke’s Hospital” in London in 1751.
English hospital for the cure
Doctor William Battie who was the head of the “Bedlam Hospital” suggested in 1750 that an institution was formed that aimed to cure insanity, besides being a place for training of specialists. His thesis, “A Treatise on Madness” from 1758 can be described as the first textbook of psychiatry. Battie got his model hospital “St. Luke’s Hospital” in London in 1751.
