LUNACY REFORM IN NEW ZEALAND.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3746, 18 July 1883, Page 4

LUNACY REFORM IN NEW ZEALAND.

Tho Lancet of April 21st of this year makes the following remarks upon this subject:— Public opinion in New Zoaland is apparently in advance of the same authority in tho Home Country in respect to tho _ expediency of lunacy law reform. Commissioners have been appointed to reconstruct the Act of ISS2, and although they have net done all that is accessary, so much has been accomplished that there can be littlo doubt a considerable step in the right direction has been taken. Private patients cannot any longer be admitted into asylums on tho order of a relative or friend and tAvo medical certificates. It is now, the Australasian Medical Gazette informs us, impossible in New Zealand for any person to incarcerate his relative in an asylum without the order of the Resident Magistrate and lavo Justices of the Peace, Avho must call to their assistance tAvo medical mon, and they commit on savohi evidence, if the Resident Magistrate is absent, or the district is situate more than ten miles from a Resident Magistrate's Court, tAvo Justices of the Peace may act by themselves, but tho reasons must be stilted on the order for reception.'' Our medical contemporary observes—"This is a most important alteration, preventing undue or precipitate action, and will tend to stop any charges being brought against tho medical men avlio sign the certificates, or accusations brought against each other by angry relatives." This is one view to tako of "it, but there is another, and, avc think, an even more important ono. The effect of imposing these ucav preliminary proceedings Avill not so much bo that of "preventing any undue or precipitate action," as of throwing fresh obstacles in the way of the early and prompt treatment of tho insane. If it bo injurious, as it undoubtedly often is, to examine a patient privately, it will bo much more injurious to subject him to a public examination in A Court of Justice. AVo are convinced that the aim should bo to simplify and not to further complicate the fuss and formality of the proceedings to bo taken before bringing a patient under treatment. Matters will never be set in a satisfactory footing for the insane until medical treatment for mental diseases is, like medical treatment for nervous diseases, immediately available. The safeguards which society and the sane require ought to bo supplied by a rigorous aud efficient system of inspection to be commenced instantly after the commencement of treatment by the removal of a patient to a hospital, not before. There is much that challenges criticism in tho scheme of the Ncav Zealand Commissioners. They h:tA*o meant well, but not been over-Avise in sonic of their recommendations, for example, in tho requirements that post mortem examinations in asylums shall bo made by "general practitioners." AYe recognise the purpose of this requirement. It is obviously to place the profession generally, outside the speciality, in a position to check practitioners in lunacy; but obviously, as the "Australasian Medical Gazette" points out, "unless a psychological expert bo associated in tho duty, the pathology of insanity -will not be promoted. The lunatic should be avcll protected by measures to discover, after death, any possible injuries, fractured ribs, kc, Avhcfher he had been properly fed, and not obviously maltreated, medically or otherwise. It should never lie forgotten, however, in connection with asylums, that their principal function is the promotion of psychological medicine and the cure of patients, not simply the safe detention of lunatics. It would be Avell indeed for science, and, avc believe, for humanity, if this true vioAV of tho main purpose of medical institutions for the iuniiuc Avere more extensively recognised, or even as clearly understood, as the medical aspect of hospital provision for tho ordinary sick is understood. Unfortunately, however, this is not the fact, as our contemporary proceeds to make plain, " The latter feature (that is, the use of asylums as places of "safe detention") has already most dcA*elopcd itself in asylum practice in England, Avith the result of filling the asylums with chronic lunatics through discouragement of enterprise in medical treatment, and a false economy in the matter of drugs, instruments for physical diagnosis, kc" We regret to have to acknowlc.lgo that tho indictment against us is true, and, AA'hich is Averse, there is no near prospect of amendment.