| Description Of Item | From the collection of Thomas Laycock. Article is titled ‘The Treatment of Melancholia with Refusal of Food, by James E Huxley, Medical Superintendent of the Kent County Lunatic Asylum. Published in The Asylum Journal, Volume 1, Issue 13, May 1855, pages 198-200. The article describes two anonymous male patients with ‘severe cases’ of melancholia who refused to eat.
Huxley explains that the first patient named only as ‘S’ was experiencing extreme anxiety, being a ‘in constant dread of poverty’ and refusing to eat, conduct business or leave his bed. S died despite being given ‘fluid nutriment with brandy’, a sedative mixture, and occasionally hand-fed food. Huxley suggests that upon reconsideration, S should have ‘perhaps, been at once fed with the pump, and have had the process repeated at intervals.’ Huxley notes that force-feeding a patient like S with a pump would likely have sustained S more effectively, noting that ‘feeding the unwilling by hand and persuasion is often a very uncertain process. As no one can exactly calculate the waste, once cannot precisely tell how much has been deposited in the stomach.’
The second patient known only as ‘T’ was admitted three weeks after the death of S. T had been found wandering many miles from home, starving and ‘muttering incoherently.’ He refused to eat food offered to him by hand, so the ‘stomach pump’ was used to introduce a ‘sufficient meal with brandy’ into his stomach. After this the patient ‘never refused food again’ and had no memory of the force-feeding. T was treated with the same sedative mixture as S, this time with ‘gratifying effects.’ The sedative medicine was discontinued once improvement was noted. T quickly ‘had gained flesh and strength’ and his mind also became ‘clear and sound.’ T was discharged after seven weeks of treatment. After this discharge, T wrote to Huxley to explain he remained recovered and was working again, and he had learned from his peers that a few days before he ‘lost [his] wits’ he had a persistent cold despite the warm weather. T calculates that before he was found and brought to the asylum, he was wandering around for eight days during which he likely had not eaten.
Huxley concludes that hesitating to use the stomach pump, for fear of the treatment being ‘harsh and painful,’ might result in patients being ‘killed by kindness.’
The mixture of the ‘sedative medicine’ used in both cases contained:
‘(R. Tincture of Hyoscyamus 1 oz. Comp. Spirit of Sulphuric Æther ½ . Camphor Mixture 10 ½ oz. Mix an eighth part every four hours night and day.)’
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