PIETRO PISANI, IL ‘BECCARIA DEI MATTI’

When Baron Pietro Pisani, an erudite nobleman of Palermo, was appointed administrator of the hospital for mental patients in 1824, he found them, as was generally the case in many countries, loaded with chains and their keepers armed with clubs. Pisani destroyed the chains, burned the clubs, released those in solitary confinement, and substituted a mild moral treatment, which he described in his works. In n 1825, he erected a new building, divided into two distinct sections for male and female patients; each section was separated into four wards for those suffering under different forms and degrees of the malady. He introduced occupation, gardening, building for the men, indoor work for the women, music and dancing. There were laid out gardens, which the patients cultivated; a theatre in which they performed plays, which was built by themselves. There was a regular balls once a week, which they frequented. They were encouraged to socialize and were given progressive responsibilities. Corporeal punishment or undue restraint were abolished: the only means taken to restrain patients was to seclude them in their rooms. Well regarded European and American physicians visited the Asylum, eager to assess how ‘moral treatment’ was instituted; Pisani also received famous guests such as Alexandre Dumas, who wrote about his visit to Palermo. The effects of the moral system corresponded with the wise and beneficent views of its founder, who integrated regular work with the therapeutic program of amusements and, according to a philanthropic view of life, really loved his ‘matterelli’, as familiarly he called the insanes.