treatment history
Physical restraint

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The image of strait-jackets and padded cells is one of the most popular cliches about asylums.
As early as 1830, however, the Medical Report of Dundee Lunatic Asylum questioned the excessive use of restraints for many patients. At the time - prior to a rigorous national inspection system - many asylums routinely used long periods of restraint to keep patients under control.

The right to restrain patients was hotly debated throughout the mid 19th Century. In 1839 the Directors of Dundee Asylum justified its occasional use as follows:

'Is it better to enslave the mind than to enchain the body? May there not be greater benevolence and sympathy in subjecting the members of the body to the salutary restraint than in the exercise of a moral discipline which will ever appear to human feeling burdensome and oppressive?'

By the time the new Asylum at West Green was being planned in the 1870s, the practice of restraint was decreasing. A log-book was kept of every incident of restraint or seclusion - its final entry was in 1901, and restraint was not used after that date.

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