Great Throughts Treasury
This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Philippe Pinel
French Physician instrumental in the development of a humane psychological approach to the custody and care of psychiatric patients, referred to as Moral Therapy
"How are we to distinguish between the exasperation caused by the chains and the symptoms peculiar to the illness?"
"I cannot here avoid giving my most decided sufferage in favour of the moral qualities of maniacs. I have no where met, excepting in romances, with fonder husbands, more affectionate parents, more impassioned ... than in the lunatic asylum, during their intervals of calmness and reason."
"It is an art of no little importance to administer medicines properly: but, it is an art of much greater and more difficult acquisition to know when to suspend or altogether to omit them."
"In all public asylums as well as in prisons and hospitals, the surest, and, perhaps, the only method of securing health, good order, and good manners, is to carry into decided and habitual execution the natural law of bodily labour, so contributive and essential to human happiness."