Whipping-posts may still be seen in some villages in England, in the vicinity of stocks. Of course they were largely employed for idle vagabonds, but many really insane people suffered. The following item from the constable's account at Great Staughton, Huntingdonshire, illustrates the custom of whipping wandering lunatics:--"1690/1. Paid in charges, taking up a distracted woman, watching her and whipping her next day, 8s. 6d."[54]
Let me here refer for a moment to the "brank."
The "brank" or "scold's bridle" was very probably used in former days for lunatics--an instrument of torture which has received much elucidation from my friend Dr. Brushfield, the late medical superintendent of Brookwood Asylum. Indeed, it is certain that it, or a similar gag, called the "witch's bridle," was employed for these unfortunate suspects, of whom so many, as we have good reason to conclude, were insane or hystero-epileptics. In the church steeple at Forfar one was preserved, within recent times, with the date 1661.[55] Archdeacon Hale many years ago suggested that the "brank" was used to check noisy lunatics of the female sex; and in reference to this, Dr. Brushfield remarks: "Medical officers of asylums can always point out many female patients who, if they had been living a couple of centuries back, would undoubtedly have been branked as scolds. One of the female lunatics in the Cheshire Asylum gave me, a few days since, a very graphic account of the manner in which she had been bridled some years ago whilst an inmate of a workhouse."[56]
No doubt, in addition to branks and whipping-posts, the pillory and stocks, and probably the ducking-stool, were made use of for unruly and crazy people, who nowadays would be comfortably located in an asylum.
What now, let us ask in conclusion, are the practical inferences to draw from the descriptions which I have given respecting the popular and medical treatment of lunatics in the good old times in the British Isles?
In the first place, we see that the nature of the malady under which the insane laboured was completely misunderstood; that they often passed as witches and possessed by demons, and were tortured as such and burnt at the stake, when their distempered minds ought to have been gently and skilfully treated. Some, however, were recognized by the monks as simply lunatic, and were treated by the administration of herbs, along with, in many instances, some superstitious accompaniment, illustrating, when successful, the influence of the imagination.