The following table shows, in the clearest manner, by what gradual steps the experiment was tried and carried on at the former asylum. Dr. Charlesworth was the visiting physician and Mr. R. Gardiner Hill the house surgeon.
------+--------+-------------+---------------+----------------- Year.| Total | Total | Total number | Total number of | number | number | of instances | hours under | in the | restrained. | of restraint. | restraint. | house. | | | ------+--------+-------------+---------------+----------------- 1829 | 72 | 39 | 1727 | 20,424 1830 | 92 | 54 | 2364 | 27,113¾ 1831 | 70 | 40 | 1004 | 10,830 1832 | 81 | 55 | 1401 | 15,671½ 1833 | 87 | 44 | 1109 | 12,003½ 1834 | 109 | 45 | 647 | 6,597 1835 | 108 | 28 | 323 | 2,874 1836 | 115 | 12 | 39 | 334 1837 | 130 | 2 | 3 | 28 ------+--------+-------------+---------------+-----------------
Here we observe that in 1829 more than half the number of the inmates were subjected to mechanical restraint, while in 1836, out of 115 patients, only twelve were so confined, and in 1837 there were only two out of 130.[178] The total disuse of mechanical restraints followed. They were, however, resorted to on one or two occasions subsequently.
In connection with the foregoing, it must be mentioned that the entries of the visitors and the reports of the physicians alike agree in describing the condition of the patients as much improved, the quiet of the house increased, and the number of accidents and suicides as materially reduced in number.
It would appear that the mitigation of restraint, as evidenced by these minutes (which commence with 1819), "was ever the principle," to use Mr. Hill's own words, "pressed upon the attention of the Boards of the Lincoln Asylum by its able and humane physician, Dr. Charlesworth, at whose suggestion many of the more cruel instruments of restraint were long since destroyed, very many valuable improvements and facilities gradually adopted, and machinery set in motion which has led to the unhoped-for result of actual abolition, under a firm determination to work out the system to its utmost applicable limits." Mr. Hill became house surgeon in 1835; and it will be seen, by the table already given, that the amount of restraint (which, in consequence of Dr. Charlesworth's exertions, had already remarkably decreased) became less and less under the united efforts of these gentlemen, until the close of the year 1837, when restraint was entirely abolished; and while, on the one hand, as Mr. Hill frankly acknowledges, "to his [Dr. Charlesworth's] steady support, under many difficulties, I owe chiefly the success which has attended my plans and labours," while Dr. Charlesworth's great merit, both before and after Mr. Hill's appointment, must never be overlooked, it is due to the latter gentleman to admit that he was the first _to assert the principle_ of the entire abolition of mechanical restraint, as is stated in the "Fourteenth Annual Report of the Lincoln Asylum," which report is signed by Dr. Charlesworth himself.