Lecture on psychiatric institutions, the Austrian law of Curatel and separate asylums for drunkenness / by Herr Director Schlangenhausen.

  • Schlangenhausen.
Date:
[1896?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Lecture on psychiatric institutions, the Austrian law of Curatel and separate asylums for drunkenness / by Herr Director Schlangenhausen. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    sirous to educate themselves as specialists in psychiatry and whom the State requires for the examination and certifying of insanity. If now at the conclusion of this part of my lecture I recapitulate briefly, my proposals may perhaps be for¬ mulated as follows :— 1. Creation of a central authority for lunacy affairs in Great Britain and Ireland. 2. Construction by the State of psychiatric institutions with Observation Departments for the education of doctors in psychiatry. 3. Introduction of a procedure similar to the Austrian Curatel procedure for the protection of the subject and for the protection of the pioperty of all irresponsible persons —whether insane persons or habitual drunkards. 11. Just as divers mental maladies, which science now recog¬ nises as such, were regarded about a century ago as moral delinquencies, and the unhappy sufferers rendered respon¬ sible for the same, there exists now a similar view amongst the public, and, unfortunately too, amongst doctors, respect¬ ing alcoholism. The expression alcoholism is a wide con¬ ception including a great variety of different forms, and for that reason, it is difficult to regard all drunkards from one and the same point of view. First of all, it is necessary to distinguish between two very distinct categories of drunkards. The one category consists of persons who drink too much, without really knowing that they do so, and who perish at a compara¬ tively early age from chronic alcohol poisoning. With these persons neither the specialist in lunacy nor the police have anything to do. The second category consists of per¬ sons who are described by all their associates as drunkards, and the principal feature of whose existence is a charac¬ teristic tendency to ever-increasing moral depravation.