The Western Journal of Medicine and Surgery (Volume 5)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1842. Excerpt: ... THE WESTERN JOURNAL OF MEDICINE AND SURGERY. FEBRUARY, 1842. Art. I.--What shall we do with our Insane? By Edward Jakvis, M. D., of Louisville, Kentucky. What shall we do with our Insane 1 This is a question that must come home to all of us, whether physicians or citizens, and sometimes appeal with fearful earnestness to our hearts and understandings for answer. And are we ready to give it? Every one of us is liable to find insanity, in some form or other, in his own family. Every physician may be called, at any time, to see it among his friends. His advice is then pressingly asked--What shall be done with the patient suffering from moral or intellectual derangement? This is a question--not, indeed, of life or death--for insanity is not a dangerous disease; comparatively few need die of it. But it is a question of future soundness of reason and of correct feelings, or of permanent insanity. And whether our patients or our friends shall be brought back to mental life and all its enjoyments, to usefulness, society, and to happiness; or whether the incubus of lunacy shall weigh forever upon their understandings, their feelings and affections be enchained or perverted, and they become a burden upon their families, a terror to society, or perhaps, sinking into fatuity, a mockery to the unthinking and the heartless; which of these shall happen, depends upon us, and our answer to the question--What shall be done with the insane? Nor is this a rare question. It has been asked, or it ought to be asked, frequently; for there were, at the last national census'taken. in the year 1840, eight hundred and thirty-three lunatics and idiots in Kentucky; eight hundred and fifty-one inTennesee; five hundred and sixty-eight in Indiana; two hundred and twenty-seven in Illinois...