4 ideas
Tuke records that in 1791 a Quaker woman died in the York Asylum after her Friends had been refused permission to visit her. William Tuke then urged the Society of Friends to found their own asylum, the Retreat, which opened near York in 1796 and aimed to care for the insane humanely rather than through chains and harsh confinement.
Moral treatment holds that the insane keep enough reason and desire for esteem to be governed through it. Staff treat patients as capable of ordinary social conduct, reward self-control, and appeal to their wish to be well regarded, so that patients regulate themselves rather than being held by external force. Restraint is kept minimal, mild and brief, and cruelty is excluded, because terror destroys the very self-command the method depends on.
Tuke argues that regular, suitable occupation, such as gardening, sewing or other domestic tasks, calms and redirects the mind more effectively than idleness or confinement. Work fills attention that would otherwise feed delusion or agitation, restores ordinary habits, and gives patients a routine sense of usefulness. Occupation is therefore treated as therapy rather than as labor extracted from inmates.
The Retreat's buildings and grounds were designed to lessen the look and feel of imprisonment. Iron window frames were made to resemble wooden sashes, gardens and a sunken boundary softened the sense of enclosure, and the rooms were given a domestic character.