From this point onwards, animals became commonplace in psychiatric institutions and the British Charity Commission advised that lunatic asylums might keep animals as a means of softening the grim, prisonlike environment. Later, in 1813, a Quaker called William Tuke founded a progressive institution for the вЂmentally incapacitatedвЂ™ in York and used familiar animals, including sea-gulls, hawks, rabbits and chickens, to engender вЂinnocent pleasure and interactions and awakening of social and benevolent feelingsвЂ™ in the patients. The assumption was that this would help children to control their innately вЂbeast likeвЂ™ characteristics.

In 1699 John Locke prescribed giving children small animals, including dogs, birds or even squirrels, to look after, in order to foster the development of вЂtender feelings and responsibility for othersвЂ™. Myers (1998) draws our attention to the book вЂDe Canibus BritannicusвЂ™, written in the sixteenth century by Dr Cairs in which he advocated the therapeutic use of dogs and recommended that a person afflicted by illness should carry a small dog on their bosom to soak up the disease. The role of animals in supporting mental health and emotional wellbeing is probably not a modern phenomenon.

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