Abstract
IN his chairman's address at the inaugural meeting of the Indian Division of the Royal Medico-Psychological Association (J. Me/it. Sci., 85, 381; 1939) Lieut. Colonel C. J. Lodge Patch gives a striking account of the inhuman treatment of the insane in India which has persisted down to the present day. During the last hundred years, though there have been flashes of intelligence, interest and humanity in the ‘forties, ‘fifties and ‘sixties associated with the names of Honigberger, Smith and De Renzy, there have been frequent returns to a state of almost primeval darkness. On his appointment as medical superintendent of the Punjab Mental Hospital in 1922, Colonel Patch found a deplorable state of affairs. Nearly all the male patients were allowed to go about stark naked, handcuffs and fetters were applied on little or no provocation, and the patients were living in a reign of terror. His first act was to collect two hundredweight of handcuffs and send them in a bullock cart to the central jail. His next was to dismiss a swarm of undesirable attendants, and then to remove the bolts and bars which gave the hospital the aspect of a prison. Within the last few months a new hospital has been built to Colonel Patch's designs on modern lines and not containing a single bar, grill or grating. Throughout the whole of India, abuses in the treatment of the insane still exist, as is shown by the fact that Colonel Patch has admitted to his hospital hundreds of patients with scars of beatings, blistorings, bleedings and other brutalities administered to drive out the devil supposed to have taken possession of the madman's mind. There is therefore much that can be done in India by spreading knowledge of the nature, prophylaxis and treatment of insanity.
Article PDF
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Psychiatry in the Punjab. Nature 144, 662 (1939). https://doi.org/10.1038/144662a0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/144662a0