CHAPTER XI.

PROGRESS OF PSYCHOLOGICAL MEDICINE DURING THE LAST FORTY YEARS: 1841-1881.*

IF, gentlemen, History be correctly defined as Philosophy teaching by examples, I do not know that I could take any subject for my Address more profitable or fitting than the Progress of Psychological Medicine during the forty years which, expiring to-day, mark the life of the Association over which, thanks to your suffrages, I have the honour to preside this year-an honour greatly enhanced by the special circumstances under which we assemble, arising out of the meeting in this metropolis of the International Medical Congress. To it I would accord a hearty welcome, speaking on behalf of this Association, which numbers amongst its honorary members so many distinguished alienists, American and. European. Bounded by the limits of our four seas, we are in danger of overlooking the merits of those who live and work beyond them. I recall the observation of

* Presidential Address, delivered at the Annual Meeting of the MedicoPsychological Association, held at University College, London, August 2, 1881.

444

PSYCHOLOGY IN EUROPE

Arnold of Rugby, that if we were not a very active people, our disunion from the Continent would make us nearly as bad as the Chinese. "Foreigners say," he goes on to remark, "that our insular situation cramps and narrows our minds. And this is not mere nonsense either. What is wanted is a deep knowledge of, and sympathy with, the European character and institutions, and then there would be a hope that we might each impart to the other that in which we are superior."

Do we not owe to France the classic works of Pinel and of Esquirol-justly styled the Hippocrates of Psychological Medicine-works whose value time can never destroy; and have not these masters in Medical Psychology been followed by an array of brilliant names familiar to us as household words, Georget, Bayle, Ferrus, Foville, Leuret, Falret, Voisin, Trélat, Parchappe, Morel, Marcé, who have passed away,* and by those now living who, either inheriting their name or worthy of their fame, will be inscribed on the long roll of celebrated pychologists of which that country can boast.

If Haslam may seem to have stumbled upon General Paralysis, we may well accord to French alienists the merit of having really discovered the disorder which, in our department, is the most fascinating, as it has formed. the most prominent object of research, during the last forty years.

To mention Austria and

Germany, is to recall Lan

I here do homage to the dead. Calmeil, Baillarger, and Brierre de Boismont still live, at an advanced age. (Since this address was given, the last named has died. See eloquent tribute to his memory by M. Motet, in Journal of Mental Science, April, 1882.)

germann, Feuchtersleben, Reil, Friedreich, Jacobi, Zeller, Griesinger, Roller, and Flemming, who, full of years and honours, has now passed away.

Has not Belgium her Guislain, Holland her Schroeder van der Kolk, and Italy her Chiaruggi?

And when I pass from Europe to the American continent, many well-known names arise, at whose head stands the celebrated Dr. Rush. Woodward, Bell, Brigham, and Howe (whose many-sided labour included the idiot) will be long remembered, and now, alas! I have to include among the dead an honoured name, over whom the grave has recently closed. Saintship is not the exclusive property of the Church. Medicine has also her calendar. Not a few physicians of the mind have deserved to be canonized; and to our psychological Hagiology, I would now add the name of Isaac Ray. With his fellow-workers in the same field, among whom are men not less honoured, I would venture to express the sympathy of this Association in the loss they have sustained. Nor can I pass from these names, although departing from my intention of mentioning only the dead, without paying a tribute of respect to that remarkable woman, Miss Dix, who has a claim to the gratitude of mankind for having consecrated the best years of her varied life to the fearless advocacy of the cause of the insane, and to whose exertions not a few of the institutions for their care and treatment in the States owe their origin.

Abroad, psychological journalism has been in advance of ours.

The French alienists established in 1843 their

446

ORIGIN OF ASSOCIATION.

Annales Médico-Psychologiques (one of whose editors, M. Foville, is with us to-day), five years before Dr. Winslow issued his Journal, the first devoted to medical psychology in this country, and ten years before our own Journal appeared, in 1853.

The Germans and Americans began their Journals in the following year-1844; the former, the Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Psychiatrie, and the latter the American Journal of Insanity.

I believe that our Association has precedence of any other devoted to Medical Psychology, and it is an interesting fact that its establishment led to that of the corresponding Association in France-a society whose secretary, M. Motet, I am glad to see among my auditors. The Association of Medical Superintendents of American Institutions for the Insane was instituted in 1844; that of Germany in 1864, the subject of Psychology having previously formed a section of a Medical Association.

Returning to our own country, I may observe that when Dr. Hitch, of the Gloucester Asylum, issued the circular which led to the formation of this Association in 1841, almost half a century had elapsed since the epoch (1792) which I may call the renaissance of the humane. treatment of the insane, when the Bicêtre in France, and the York Retreat in England, originated by their example an impulse still unspent, destined in the course of years to triumph, as we witness to-day. This triumph was sccured, in large measure, by the efforts of two men who, forty years ago, shortly after the well-known experiment

LORD SHAFTESBURY AND CONOLLY.

447

at Lincoln, by the late Mr. Robert Gardiner Hill, were actively engaged in ameliorating the condition of the insane. Need I say that I refer to Lord Shaftesbury and Dr. Conolly? The nobleman and the physician (alike forward to recognize the services of the pioneers of 1792), each in his own sphere having a common end in view, and animated by the same spirit, gave an impetus to the movement, the value and far-reaching extent of which it is almost impossible to exaggerate. Lord Shaftesbury,* celebrating his eightieth birthday this year, still lives to witness the fruits of his labours, of which the success of the well-known Acts with which his name is associated, will form an enduring memorial. Dr. Conolly was in his prime. He had been two years at Hanwell, and was contending against great difficulties with the courageous determination which characterized him. I do not hold the memory of Conolly in respect, merely or principally because he was the apostle of non-restraint, but because, although doubtless fallible (and indiscriminate eulogy would defeat its object), he infused into the treatment of the insane a contagious earnestness possessing a value far beyond any mere system or dogma. His real merit, his true glory, is to have leavened the opinions and stimulated the best energies of many of his contemporaries, to have stirred their enthusiasm and inflamed their zeal, to have not only transmitted but to have rendered brighter the torch which he seized from the

As will be seen by the history of lunacy reform contained in this volume, Lord Shaftesbury's interest in the movement extends back as far as 1828.