LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
" BEHIND THE SHUT DOOR."
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] Sfa,—The letter of Dr. Yellowlees in the last issue of the Spectator reveals a singular incapacity to probe to the real root of the question of ill-treatment in public asylums. Ills naive suggestion that an emissary from the office of the Spectator should be invited to visit " The Retreat " at York to see for himself what the conditions are there will only raise a smile among those who are acquainted with asylum life. " The Retreat " is admitted to be one of the best- managed asylums in England, and Dr. Yellowlees, who has lately been' appointed to the post of Medical Superintendent, may be trusted to carry on the work so well and conscientiously conducted by the late Medical Superintendent, Dr. Bedford Pierce. But even if ill-treatment were rife at " The Retreat," which no one has suggested, does Dr. Yellowlees imagine that the attendants there would oblige the expected and officially- conducted visitor with a sample of it ? When will medical superintendents and lunacy authorities realize that no ill- treatment will ever be detected by such means ? What has hitherto escaped the notice of 99 out of 100 medical
superintendents, as well as the Board of Control, is not likely to be revealed to the most inquisitive of lay visitors. As I am never tired of repeating, the only people who know any- thing of the dark side of asylum life are the male and female attendants and the patients. Of the attendants, not one in a thousand will tell what he or she knows, and of the patients, should these tell, not one in ten thousand will be believed. The whole weight of official authority will be invoked to prove that the statements are necessarily " delusions."
A sentence in Dr. Yellowlees' own letter shows incontestably the official bias in this direction. He says that " the internal evidence alone in ` An Ex-Patient's' letter would have given a different idea of its value " had " some first-hand know- ledge " (presumably, a mental expert's Knowledge) been available. That is to say, the mental expert would have been able to establish conclusively that the " internal evidence " showed unmistakable " delusional " features, and was, there- fore, not to be taken seriously. Now, I have read " An Ex-Patient's" letter as carefully probably as has Dr. Yellow- lees, and to me it shows nothing of the sort. The incidents related have not the remotest resemblance to " delusions of persecution," which are the only delusions of an insane type which the letter could be made to suggest. Insane " delusions of persecution " are always standardized and stereotyped, and are either illogical and absurd, or quite incredible, when all the circumstances are considered. The incidents narrated by " An Ex-Patient " are none of these things. They are neither illogical, impossible, nor incredible. They may be lies, but they are certainly not insane delusions. And they do not in the least read like lies, or the disjecta membra of a disordered imagination or memory. They read like true and very bitter memories, retained, as vividly as such memories usually are, for nearly thirty years.
There is one sentence in Dr. Carswell's letter to which I should like to refer. Will he inform me, or. the Editor of the Spectator, of the number of English asylums in which " female nursing in the male wards is usually employed," and what he means by " the higher grade of nursing staff " in which " general hospital training in addition to asylum service " is now required ? Does he mean that all those existing members of the higher nursing staff who have not received this training have been superseded by those who have, and if he does not mean this, will he tell us what proportion the former bear to the latter 2-1 am, Sir, &c.,
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