Page:The Harveian oration 1866.djvu/39

 had so long resounded with cries and howlings and clanking of chains.

It was the close of the year 1792. Terror then reigned throughout the rest of Paris. But within the walls of Bicêtre an ancient reign of terror had ceased; a bloodless revolution had been accomplished by the courage, humanity and wisdom of one man searching for nature's secrets by experiment.

Amidst this blessed calm of his own creating Pinel pursued his study of mental disorder; regulating with assiduous care the internal arrangements of the hospital, comparing month by month and year by year the results of his treatment; for severity and violence substituting the moral influence of gentleness and kindly attention, and seeking to correct what was deranged by appealing to what was yet sound. He thus established a system of treatment which soon bore the fruits of numerous and striking cures.

The treatise, in which he gave to the world, in 1801, the happy results of this large experience, must ever mark an epoch in the history of medicine. It made inexcusable the gross ignorance