Volume - The Clarence Darrow Collection

132
FROM "DEMONIACAL POSSESSION" TO INSANITY.
reason. Thus was gained one of the greatest, though one
the least known, triumphs of modern science and humanit}'.
The results obtained by Pinel had an instant effect, not
only in France but throughout Europe : the news spreac
from hospital to hospital. At his death, Esquirol took up his
work ; and, in the place of the old training of judges, tor^
turers, and executioners by theology to carry out its ideas ii
cruelty, there was now trained a school of physicians to de^j
velop science in this field and carry out its decrees in mercy.
A similar evolution of better science and practice tooli
place in England. In spite of the coldness, and even hostility*
of the greater men in the Established Church, and notwitl
standing the scriptural demonstrations of Wesley that the ||
majority of the insane were possessed of devils, the scientific
method steadily gathered strength. In 1750 the condition of
the insane began to attract especial attention ; it was found
that mad-houses were swayed by ideas utterly indefensible,
and that the practices engendered by these ideas were monstrous.
As a rule, the patients were immured in cells, and
in many cases were chained to the walls in ; others, flogging
and starvation played leading parts, and in some cases the
patients were killed. Naturally enough, John Howard declared,
in 1789, that he found in Constantinople a better insane
asylum than the great St. Luke's Hospital in London. Well
might he do so ; for, ever since Caliph Omar had protected
and encouraged the scientific investigation of insanity by
Paul of ^gina, the Moslem treatment of the insane had
been far more merciful than the system prevailing through
out Christendom.!
In 1792 the same year in which Pinel began his great
work in France William Tuke began a similar work ir
England. There seems to have been no connection betweer
these two reformers ; each wrought independently' of th(
other, but the results arrived at were the same. So, too, ii
* For the services of Tenon and his associates, and also for the work of Pine
see especially Esquirol, Des Maladies mentaks, Paris, 1838, voL i, p. 35 ; and ft
the general subject, and the condition of the hospitals at this period, see Dagroi
as above,
f See D. H. Tuke, as above, p. no; also Tr