Lunacy in his case. The Lord Chancellor
dined with him, and was so much pleased
with the clear wit and wisdom of his host,
that at parting he alluded with ridicule to
the absurd allegation made against him. He
could now, he said, be sure of its falsity.
Thereupon, the gentleman bravely took up
and defended his position. Why, he asked,
was it absurd for him to believe the evidence
of his own eyes? The Queen watched him,
and smiled at him in the opera, noticed him
significantly in the parks, &c. This gentleman
was proved a lunatic, and placed in an
asylum. Yet, when his estate in Chancery
became embarrassed, he was the only man
able to disentangle all the knots, and get it
out of trouble; afterwards he was appointed
steward over it, wholly trusted with the
management, and with the keeping of the accounts.
With very many such instances, some of them
very curious and interesting, Dr. Conolly
fortified his position, that all lunatics ought not
—merely as such—to be immured in madhouses.

At about the same time or a year sooner, it
happened that in the Lincoln Lunatic Asylum
a patient died in consequence of being
strapped to the bed in a strait waistcoat
during the night. This accident led to the
establishment of a rule, that whenever
restraints were used at night an attendant
should continue in the room, and the
consequence of the rule was a great diminution of
the use of such restraints. In the same
asylum Dr. Charlesworth, the physician,
gradually felt his way towards the abandonment
of such restraints as could be found
unnecessary, and in August, eighteen 'thirty-four,
it was reported that for many successive
days not one patient had been in mechanical
restraint of any kind. At that time Mr.
Hadwen was the house-surgeon of the asylum.
He was succeeded in the year following by
Mr. Gardiner Hill, who was soon able to say
that not one patient had been in restraint for
four-and-twenty days. In the year 'thirty-six
at the Lincoln Asylum no instrument of
restraint was used for three successive
months, and in the year following Mr. Hill
expressed his confident opinion that mechanical
restraints might be abolished altogether.

The new practice is not yet accepted on
the continent of Europe. To the medical
practitioners of England belongs the honour
of having led and won the battle against a
prejudice that had been rooted in society for
upwards of two thousand years. Side by
side with them have marched their brethren
in America, who have here and there carried
gallantly a strong advanced position by
themselves. Such an achievement—in such
achievements French and Germans also have
excelled us—was, for example, the establishment
nine years ago of the Massachusetts
school for idiotic children.

When Mr. Gardiner Hill first cut himself
adrift from the whole system of restraint in
treating lunacy it was most difficult for the
great body of society to accept the idea that
mechanical restraint could be dispensed with
in all cases. "Indeed," he says in a recent
book published for the just assertion of his
claims, "for many years I was stigmatised as
one bereft of reason myself, a speculator,
peculator, and a practical breaker of the
sixth commandment, by exposing the lives of
the attendants to the fury of the patients.
The system was called 'a piece of contemptible
quackery, a mere bait for the public ear.'
As regards the Lincoln Asylum, it was most
extraordinary, that notwithstanding the many
expedients previously resorted to with the
avowed purpose of diminishing the number
of restraints, so great was the opposition,
both within and without the institution, that
despite the constant and strenuous support of
Dr. Charlesworth, I was ultimately compelled
to resign my appointment. In fact, it was
impossible to remain. The attendants were
encouraged in acts of disobedience, and all
control was lost. Had I retained my appointment,
I must have sacrificed my principles."

The first to adopt, freely and fully, the
principles laid down at Lincoln was Dr.
Conolly at Hanwell. Mr. Hill, who gives
this honour to Dr. Pritchard of Northampton,
says: "Next after Dr. Pritchard, came that
'great and good man' Dr. Conolly; and,
perhaps, but for him, the system might have
been strangled in its birth. It was ordained
otherwise. Mr. Serjeant Adams, whose
attention had been directed to the new system
at Lincoln, was in the habit of visiting the
Lincoln Asylum when on circuit, and the
result was, that when Dr. Conolly received
the appointment of physician to the Hanwell
Asylum, Mr. Serjeant Adams, who was one
of the visiting justices at Hanwell, recommended
Dr. Conolly to visit Lincoln. Dr.Conolly
did so, and was so pleased with the
quiet and order which he observed there,
that on his return to Hanwell, he set to work
vigorously, with a view to abolish restraint in
that giant establishment."

We believe it to be quite true that, but
for this helper, Dr. Conolly, the system
indeed would have been strangled in its
birth. His help was all powerful, for he
was not only the ablest man enlisted upon
its behalf, but he was prepared for it by all
his previous reasonings and observations.
The good principle derived also from his
support this great advantage, that he worked
it out most wisely and vigorously in one of
the largest institutions of the country, and in
the immediate neighbourhood of London, to
all intents and purposes in London under the
eye of the ablest and most influential men
who could be usefully impressed with a sense
of its importance. We take nearly all the
present history of the non-restraint system
from Dr. Conolly's book "on the Treatment
of Lunacy without Mechanical Restraints," in
which he is concerned very much to prove