The Family System as applied to the Treatment of the Chronic Insane

Abstract

Many years ago—between 1854, when I was appointed to the medical charge of the Murray Royal Institution, and 1859, when the first Report of the new Lunacy Board for Scotland was issued—I took much interest in the subject of provision on the large scale for the chronic insane; advocating strongly for the harmless, incurable, industrious classes thereof, some modification of what is now variously known as the “Gheel system,” “Boarding-out system,” or “Family system,” of treatment. I was then of opinion that, hesides utilising or applying this system on the small scale in connexion with existing or prospective public hospitals for the insane—it was not only desirable, but feasible, to construct de novo one or more National Colonies on the Gheel plan—adopting of course only those features in the original Gheel that were worthy of imitation, or that it might be found practicable to imitate, in this country—and omitting or modifying those that appeared objectionable. I had no doubt as to the practicability of the scheme; though I was quite alive to the objections that would be offered—the difficulties that would attend its inauguration. Most unfortunately, as it seems to me, such a plan did not at that time, in any form, find favour with the authorities charged with the control of the state arrangements for the treatment of the insane poor in Scotland, and a golden opportunity was thus lost of establishing on Scottish soil an improved Gheel free ab initio from the defects of its grand prototype.