Where does the butterfly net trope for catching crazy people come from?

Ok, so we’re all familiar with the trope where men in white coats with a giant butterfly net and a syringe filled with tranquilizers are chasing down a crazy person that needs to be committed to the asylum. If you see a cartoon of a guy with a giant butterfly net running, and nothing else, you know that he’s catching insane people, not butterflies.

Except, it seems like butterfly nets are really bad for actually catching people. Butterfly nets aren’t really that sturdy and throwing one over a person wouldn’t necessarily mean that you could drag them along into the ambulance. They could probably break out of it fairly easily, and since people don’t float (as butterflies do) they’d still have their feet to guide their direction. Plus, if you’re close enough to throw a butterfly net over someone, you’re probably close enough to grab them by the arm and shoot them with a syringe full of tranquilizers.

So, both seriously and not, where the hell does this trope come from? What’s the evolution of this as a trope?