HOC FECIT AMICORUM CARITAS IN HUMANITATIS ARGUMENTUM ANNO DÑI MDCCXCII.
Referring to the establishment of the Retreat, an American physician of celebrity in the department of Psychological Medicine says, "Merit of this kind is seldom duly appreciated by the world, for it does not strike the imagination like that of brilliant discoveries in the physical sciences, and the very reason that reforms like that in question are so obviously sanctioned and confirmed by common sense and the feelings of common humanity is apt to detract from the merit of those who conceive them."[115]
There are several points to which I have devoted considerable labour among the archives of the Retreat, and on which I have had the advantage of frequently conversing with the author of the "Description of the Retreat" in former years. Among these I may refer to an interesting explanation of the origin of the now familiar term "Retreat" as applied to a lunatic asylum. One day the conversation in the family circle turned on the question, What name should be given to the proposed institution? when my grandmother, who was much interested in the establishment, quickly remarked that it should be called a _Retreat_. It was at once seen that feminine instinct had solved the question, and the name was adopted, "to convey the idea of what such an institution should be, namely, a place in which the unhappy might obtain a refuge; a quiet haven in which the shattered bark might find the means of reparation or of safety;"--a term which became the parent of numberless imitations, some of them, it must be confessed, only so called by a miserable irony. It need hardly be remarked that this term had been from an early period employed in the Church of Rome to indicate a place of resort for meditation and penance during certain periods of the year.
Family tradition says that the wife of the projector of the Retreat--a woman of great force of character--questioned at first his wisdom in proposing the foundation of such an institution. He had (with her full concurrence) already established a school for the higher education of girls, among other projects which sprang from his fertile brain, and she playfully told him that people would say he had had many children, and that his last was an idiot. Here for once the woman's instinct failed, and masculine sense succeeded. Some of his co-religionists also discouraged the undertaking. "Looking back to the year 1792, and considering the miserable condition of the insane in general at that period, it appears to us almost strange that the proposal should have met in the first instance with considerable opposition, and that the institution had to struggle through many difficulties into existence."[116]