THE BROTHERLY WAY

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 80, Issue 266, 9 November 1937, Page 6

THE BROTHERLY WAY

PHYSICAL AND MENTAL WELFARE THE LAST OF BEDLAM: (ii) Dear People,—Bedlam is any place or scene where uproar or confusion prevails, states Webster’s dictionary. This description may still be applied without exaggeration to certain wards of eac | of our asylums; and probably a similar state of affairs will lung continue to exist. What is wrong with the system, however, is that many patients'*who are least able to bear noise are often unavoidably housed in such wards. Nerve trouble requires the utmost quiet and the kindest consideration. Such treatment is quite impossible in the present overcrowded, under-staffed conditio! of our mental hospitals. The unceserved torture ol nervous sufferers who are doomed to spend their days —and nights—in the companionship of violent eases, ij indescribable. Bedlam or Gentleness? “The only wise treatment of the nervously affected,” says Lord Horder, the King’s physician, “is the treatment of the individual by the individual. Ary system which inspires gentleness, virtue, wisdom and endurance will help to hasten and establish lasting cures. Any system which cannot prescribe these remedies obstructs the cure and should be put aside. ’ Our present mental hospital system is certainly unable to prescribe the treatment outlined by Lord Horder; and it is welcome news to the social workers of New Zealand that the Hon. Peter Fraser's recent statement foreshadows the putting aside of an unsatisfactory system which “obstructs the cure” by denying to the mentally affected that sane rational treatment so unmistakably indicated by one; of the world’s highest authorities. Bedlam and Noise. Mr. Ramsay MacDonald recently stated in one of his public addresses that anyone who confessed, formerly, that he was troubled by noise was looked upon as a crank—or worse, but, he added, it is now rightly regarded that noise is something that ought not to be tolerated by any decent man or woman. Mr. MacDonald suggested that it is the duty of all tq, co-ordinate in the protection of life from the jarring of nerves by noise. Lord Horder has repeatedly spoken to the same effect. “I have no doubt whatever,” he says, “that the widespread incidence of nervous disease is partly due to noise. Our nervous systems are very resilient—t is extraordinary what the healthy nervous system can put up with and adjust itself—but the effect of noise upon the strained nervous system is more than deplorable.” Adjustment to Bedlam. Dr. Alexis Carrel goes further, wen. than Lord Horder. “In adapting his system to the strain of civilisation,’’ says the famous scientist, "it has been proved that man's adaptive mechanisms of the nervous system is not so developed as those of the other organic apparatuses. Civlisation has .Treated new stimulii against which man has no defences. The nervous system cannot adapt itself too loud and continued noise, nor to lack of sleep. Man may be forced to adjust himself to these evils; but such adjustment is very far from being a victorious adaptation; it. brings about organic and mental changes which are i equivalent to a degradation of civilised man.” Yet, in the blessed name of. social service and curative medicine, I

and at the price of four guineas per week, numerous strained and deranged nervous systems are daily forced to the impossible task of adapting themselves to a Bedlamism against which the authorities unite in saying they are without defences!

Bedlam and the Heart. In tiie New York State Journal of Medicine, of October 5, Dr. Foster Kennedy described a series of experiments carried out at Bellevue Hospital, New York. It was found that the noise resulting from the explosion of a paper bag raised the brain pressure to four times normal, for seven seconds; and tnat thirty seconds elapsed before the pressure returned completely to normal. The undoubted effect of constant noise, states Dr. Kennedy, is disturbance of the circulatory system and an increase in the degenerative processes in the heart and arteries. “I cannot tell you the exact mortality due to noise,” states Lord Horder; but what he—or any other physician—may easily tell us is that the diseases aggravated by noise (vide Dr. Kennedy) are the cause of more than a quarter of the whole of the deaths taking place in New Zealand in any one year. Bedlam Condemned. There is not the slightest need to overstate the case against noise, says the London Times. Even in regard to its ill effects upon the systems of strong, healthy people, the case for a serious and an organised attempt to reduce noise is beyond question. If noise, therefore, is to be lessened in the interests of the physically strong, one looks forward at least to practical application of the advice given by the Hon. Peter Fraser that “we should look upon mental illness in the same way as physical illness,” and to the substitution of “gentleness, virtue, wisdom and endurance” in place of over-crowding, under-staffing and the infliction of the dins of Bedlam upon sufferers from nervous disease. j Yours as ever,