Page:The Harveian oration 1866.djvu/40

 which had prevailed respecting the habits and tendencies of the insane. It established principles for their treatment equally sagacious and humane.

The treatment of insanity by some English physicians of our own time illustrates what Bacon calls Productio Experimenti. Pinel's experiment has been extended; it has been urged to an effect more subtle. When an experiment is thus pushed further, the result, we know, in some cases differs from the original conclusions. These are proved to be less general than had been supposed, and lose their pretensions as laws of nature. How then has it fared with Pinel's conclusions when tried by an extension of his experiment?

Pinel and the early reformers, while abolishing chains and other obviously degrading means of restraining lunatics, did not deem it expedient to abolish all mechanical restraints. They still employed the strait waistcoat in certain emergencies; and other physicians, less enlightened than they were, continued the use of various mechanical contrivances both hurtful and humiliating to the patients. To abolish these, was to repeat Pinel's