Volume 2

Health lectures for the people.

Date:
1883-1892
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Health lectures for the people. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    19/600 (page 7)
    fere, accompanied by two medical certificates. The schedule is not laid before a judge, or any other legal authority, and the patient is received and detained on the strength of this order and the medical certificates. In the case of pauper patients only one medical certificate is demanded, accompanied either by the order of a Justice of the Peace, or by an order signed conjointly by the relieving officer (who corresponds to our inspector of poor), and an officiating clergyman of the parish. I am very far from say- ing that this system is abused in England. I am certain in fact it is not. All I say is that it is much more open to suspicion than the Scotch procedure, and that the judicial element does not enter sufficiently into it. Nor do I mean to say that the Scotch procedure entirely precludes the possibility of the improper trans- mission of a person to an asylum. It is impossible for a Sheriff to criticise each case as it presents itself; still he has the power to do so, and does do so, when anything informal appears on the face of the schedule, or when he considers the medical certificates unsatisfactory. Moreover, the public knows that it is extremely unlikely that any two medical men would combine with a third and a fourth person for a nefarious purpose, when the neces- sary instrument must receive the signature of an important magistrate. It is a wise and satisfying procedure, in the work- ing of which no difficulty is found. Perhaps the best evi- dence of its usefulness is the fact that not a single case involving the question of improper or illegal detention in an asylum has been originated before our courts for upwards of twenty years, and that since this procedure has been instituted no instance has occurred in which the charge has been sub- stantiated. But Scotland possesses another important safeguard ; it is a small country, with a limited population, and its lunacy matters are under the control and supervision of a well constituted General Board of Lunacy. This Board consists of an unpaid chairman, two unpaid legal and two paid medical commissioners, who supervise 29 asylums, 10 poorhouse wards for the reception of pauper lunatics, and 3 training institutions for imbecile chil- dren. These various institutions contain about 6500 patients.