Page8 The Provincial Lunatic Asylum was justly considered an improvement on the
jail and poorhouse plan of caring for the insane, but was ultimately found
altogether inadequate to meet the wants of these unfortunates.
In February 1,1844 Dr. Peters reports that: "I am happy to have it in
my power to show that this institution, though exceedingly limited in the means
for the proper treatment of the insane, will bear no mean comparison with
others more highly favored,"
He also mentioned a case with references to an injury received by a patient.
"One patient jumped from a third-story window, fractured both arms and dislocated the elbow joint, but we managed to keep her quiet afterwards, although she had previously been exceedingly violent, and made a good cure of her case in a few weeks."
In the reports from the Asylum, they stated with satisfaction the great success which attends the judicious treatment of the insane. It was noted that "it is a most pleasing consideration that the treatment which they meet with in asylums of reputation, salutary as it is, and conductive to their recovery, is of so mild and agreeable a character that the patients can and actually do look back upon it with pleasure and satisfaction. The severe discipline of former times has given place to a system whose chief characteristics are kindness and mildness. As Dr. Lee observes 'we have no machinery; we neither drown or torture them into reason; we meet them as friends and brothers, cultivate their affections, interest their feelings, rouse their attention, and excite their hopes.' "
"Patients" says the twentieth Glasgow report, "who
have been long in the house have become so attached to it, and so sensible of
the kind treatment which they have experienced in it, that they have actually
refused to leave it when their removal was proposed to them. Everything is done
to promote the general comfort, and the great quietness of our asylum, so often
remarked by visitors, is in no small measure the consequence of that degree of
personal liberty, which our patients enjoy, and to the tenderness observed in
the nature and use of the means of restraint when such means are
indispensable."
They look at the asylum as a "place of refuge, to which they flee of
their own accord whenever they begin to feel themselves in danger."
Some very striking instances of this nature are recorded. "A women returns and avoids a threatened attack. A man finding his head very much disturbed hurried up to the asylum, requesting immediate admission. He soon became very outrageous, but the disease having been checked in the very commencement, its violence soon subsided, and he was quickly restored to his family. A women liable to attacks from three to six times a year remains at her own desire, preferring the asylum as her permanent abode; and is of the greatest use, by counselling, assisting in soothing other patients, over whom she has great influence. "
"Indeed, while some patients do not have any desire to leave the asylum, others express the strongest aversion to leave it all. "The occupations and amusements which they find there are decidedly preferred to the cares and concerns of their own families, a predilection of a very dangerous nature, requiring strict attention and very careful management."
The X-ray department and an operating room were
established in 1936, prior to this patients had to be sent across town to the
General Hospital.
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