Complete Record - Heirs of Hippocrates No. 1572

JOSEPH GUISLAIN (1797-1850) Traité sur l'aliénation mentale et sur les hospices des aliénés. Chez J. Van der Hey et Fils, et les héritiers H. Gartman 1826 Vol. I: viii, 404 [2] pp., 3 plates; Vol. II: [2] 559 [2] pp., 7 plates (5 fold.), tables (1 fold.). 23.1 cm.

In 1821 the Commission de Surveillance Médicale dans la Province de Norde-Hollande in Amsterdam issued a statement condemning the state of Dutch hospices for the insane, which were far inferior to those such as France's Salpêtrière and England's Charenton. The Commission asked for immediate assistance in improving their facilities and treatment practices. Guislain, who was to become professor of medicine at the University of Ghent and Belgium's leading psychiatrist, was selected to do the study and make appropriate recommendations. In the report, Guislain recommended many forms of treatment for a wide range of conditions ranging from mild depression to the most severe psychoses. Although many of the treatments discussed could never be effective, they were a radical departure from the inhumane methods then in use in the majority of European hospitals for the mentally ill. Along with many of his contemporaries, Guislain condemned such treatment as cold baths, spinning the patient in specially constructed machines, sudden fright, isolation in darkness, and other self-defeating therapeutic practices. Some of these procedures are shown in the illustrations. Directions for constructing asylums are included in his recommendations, along with plans for their arrangement.

Cited references: Waller 3867; Wellcome III, p. 180

Gift of John Martin, M.D.