Conolly, John

   (1794–1866)

   Born in Lincolnshire, England, into a family of Irish origin, Conolly first served in a county militia, going into medicine as he was unable to make ends meet. He graduated with an M.D. at Edinburgh, then drifted about as a family physician and lecturer in medicine at University College London. He returned to the Midlands in 1830 and served as an inspector to county asylums, all the while becoming a cofounder of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association, which turned into the British Medical Association. In 1839, Conolly became superintendent of the Middlesex Asylum at Hanwell, just outside of London.

   After his arrival at Hanwell, Conolly accelerated a revolutionary change underway in English asylum medicine by abolishing the use of mechanical restraints. It is not that he originated the practice of treating asylum patients with kindness and "nonrestraint"—the concept goes back to the system originated at the Quaker private asylum at York, the Retreat, by its founder William Tuke. (See also "Moral Treatment".) Several other psychiatrists had already implemented nonrestraint in the British Isles. Yet Conolly’s prestige meant that his 1856 book, The Treatment of the Insane without Mechanical Restraints, became widely followed at home and abroad, and efforts to preserve the dignity of asylum patients and to offer more humane care became common in the asylum world after Conolly’s success became known. In his book he noted that "The mere abolition of fetters and restraints constitutes only a part of what is properly called the non-restraint system." Rather it was a "complete system" for managing patients involving reassurance "by a few kind words that no ill-treatment is any longer to be feared," that the patient is given clean and comfortable clothing, that he or she eats with proper tableware on a clean table, and that the patient’s "irritable brain" is given quiet and repose in his own bedroom, or, for violent patients, in a "padded room" (pp. 35–43). "The old system," Conolly said, "placed all violent or troublesome patients in the position of dangerous animals. The new system regards them as afflicted persons, whose brain and nerves are diseased, and who are to be restored to health, and comfort, and reason" (p. 53).