PRIVATE MAD - HOUSES.
A CASE showing the abuses to which these asylums are still liable, occurred within these few days at Union Hall. It is expressly provided that no person shall be received at any private mad-house, unless the parties bringing the patient produce to the owner of the establishment, a certificate from some known medical practitioner, of his or her condition. Now it is obvious, that in order to grant any such certificate, it is essential that the patient's case be carefully examined into ; and that any thing like negligence or inattention on the part of the physician may lead to very serious consequences, the most trifling of • which is the detention of the sane. There can be very little doubt, that, under the old system, many delicately nervous persons, not insane, were driven distracted, from the ,confinement, and from the society by which they were surrounded ; and thus, by the illegal restraint imposed on them in the first instance, converted into fitting objects for legal restraint ever after. But if neglect in the physician be highly 'blameable, what is to be said of a case where not even the slightest inquiry is made, end where the physician does not even see the party of whose person and property he is disposing ? According to the poliee-reports in the Daily Papers, in the case of Mr. ANDERDON, the certifying physician, on the mere representation of the parties requiring the certificate—wino were ipsofacto interested—put his name to a paper which but for an accident mighthave consigned a respectable gentleman to the most horrible of prisons for the remainder of his life. For, if the person by whose warrant the reputed insane are received into an asylum, is so negligent of his duly, what reason have we for concluding that he by whose authority they are retained—the visiting physician— is a,whit more strict ? Did we believe that the case of Mr. ANDERDON was an isolated one, we should hardly have adverted to it so formally; but Dr. EURROWES is a practitioner of the first respectability, and if he, even in one instance, granted a certificate in so unguarded a manner, what may not be expected from men of inferior standing and of inferior character ? All certificates, whether public or private, are very loosely and carelessly granted in this.country ; nor is it easy to devisma remedy for such laxity. In so important a matter, however as that we have been considering, some remedy must be solte-ht. r "fah The most obvious precaution would beets bring the supposed lunatic before a magistrate, before he is shut up. This would give at least one additional chance—and the highest—that no one should be deprived of liberty whose mental unsoundness was not plain and evident.
Previous page
