Chiarugi’s regulations for the Bonifazio mental asylum mark the first appearance in print of his landmark reforms in the humane treatment of the mentally ill. Chiarugi was the first to practise the humanitarian treatment of the insane.

Chiarugi was the first in Europe to abandon chains and fetters in a mental hospital. He required a case history for each patient, hygienic rooms with segregation of the sexes, no restraint beyond strait jacket and cotton strips, and regard for the patient as a person. He encouraged the patients to work and their attendants to practice kindness towards them. First edition in English: On Insanity and its Classification, translated with a foreward and Introduction by George Mora (1987).