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Notes of a Visit to American Asylums

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2018

Alexander Robertson
Alexander Robertson*
Affiliation:
Town's Hospital and City Parochial Asylum, Glasgow
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Extract

Last summer, in the course of a tour in the United States and Canada, I visited a number of Asylums for the Insane, jotting down my observations and impressions at the earliest opportunity after leaving the respective establishments. They are now submitted in a condensed form in these notes; and I trust that they may convey to the readers somewhat of the interest experienced by myself during my visits. It is almost superfluous to say that the physician-superintendents received me most courteously, and their kind attention will ever be suggestive of pleasant recollections in connection with my trans-Atlantic trip. Without further preface, I shall proceed first to give a short account of the Michigan Asylum,* visited 13th June, 1868.

Type
Part I.—Original Articles
Information
Journal of Mental Science , Volume 15 , Issue 69 , April 1869 , pp. 49 - 89
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1869 

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References

∗ On approaching this institution I was struck by a loud, interrupted croaking noise, not unlike the music of the “Canadian band” I had heard in the country districts of Canada, and which is produced especially by the bull frogs in the marshy parts of the “bush.” I soon, however, learned that it was the peculiar song of the seventeen year locusts, who had lately emerged from their living tombs, and were merrily living through the short span of their new existence. I afterwards came across them at different points of the American Continent eastward, as far as Baltimore. It is the male who makes the monotonous and somewhat disagreeable sound; the females busy themselves in preparing for the new generation, and are silent.Google Scholar

∗ Annual Report for 1867.Google Scholar

∗ On remarking a somewhat singular looking cat in one of the rooms, I was told it was an African one—not inappropriately placed there! Google Scholar

∗ Annual Report for 1860.Google Scholar

∗ Outside the asylum I heard this Board most unfavourably spoken of; and since my return I noticed that the Rev. Dr. Beecher has been denouncing in the strongest terms the flagrant misrule, the peculation, the jobbery, and the prostitution of justice by the civic rulers of New York generally.Google Scholar

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