High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Robert Gardiner Hill MD (1811–1878) was born in Louth, Lincoln, of parents engaged in trade. He is normally credited with being the first superintendent of a small asylum (approximately 100 patients) to develop a mode of treatment where by the reliance on mechanical restraint and coercion could be made obsolete altogether, a situation he finally achieved in 1838. Nevertheless, the debate concerning its merits continued for many years.