ABSTRACT
At the June meeting of the New York Medico-Legal Society, (whose function is of so important a character,) a paper upon Mechanical Restraint in the Treatment of the Insane," was read by Alice Bennett, M.D., Ph.D., who has been for the past three years at the head of the Women's Department of the Norristown, Pa., Asylum for the Insane. Dr. Bennett's paper, in which she took strong ground against mechanical restraints even for the most violent, was a very practical one, illustrated by examples from her own experience. During her official life at Norristown, about eight hundred 441patients have come under her care, including many who had been considered too dangerous to be managed by women attendants, even with the use of mechanical force. Dr. Bennett has been able to dispense with all such forcible appliances, and frequently, with a truly feminine tact, has discovered means of employing and interesting patients whose minds had been thought to be totally destroyed.
