Second Notice of the Eighth Report of the Commissioners in Lunacy

Extract

I have been reminded that in my first notice, when I spoke of Dr. Davey, Dr. Nesbitt, and Dr. Hitchman, as having respectively introduced the Non-Restraint System into the asylums of Colney Hatch, Northampton, and Derby, it would appear that I overlooked the fact of that system having been adopted at Northampton by Dr. Nesbitt's predecessor, the late Dr. Thomas Prichard. Although my meaning was merely that the three physicians named had each left Hanwell convinced of the practicability and safety of the non-restraint system, and had steadily maintained it on their removal; I ought, perhaps, to have added, that at Northampton it had already been acted upon, and zealously and ably defended in the successive annual reports of the superintending physician. One or two occasional instances of the abandonment of the principle deprived this early and laudable example of full effect.