Conolly, John

The modern ideas that sanity and insanity are categories created and used for the purpose of segregating, and thus injuring, persons classified as insane, and that the aim of confining people in mental hospitals is not to cure them of an illness but rather to authenticate them as insane, were clearly set forth by John Conolly almost 150 years ago. Conolly was a professor of medicine in the University of London and a prominent psychiatrist in his time. In his classic work. An Inquiry Concerning the Indications of Insanity, With Suggestions for the Better Protection and Care of the Insane, published in 1830, Conolly writes ... 

John Perceval, whose views on mental illness were cited earlier, was a contemporary of John Conolly s. Being a layman who experienced confinement in several private mental institutions at first hand, his observations on commitment deserve attention. 

Robert Gardiner Hill, at the Lincoln Asylum in England, abolishes the use of fetters and restraints. John Conolly, at Hanwell in England, does the same by 1839. 

John Conolly, An Inquiry Concerning the Indications of Insanity, With Suggestions for the Better Protection and Care of the Insane, in Hunter and Macalpine, pp. 805-809 pp. 806-807. 

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