632 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



are in a hopelessly helpless condition, and may be kept imprisoned 

 thus for years, or even for life, away from their kindred and friends, 

 and from the little ones for whom their hearts yearn with an intensity 

 that no human being can appreciate, except some mother that has 

 lost a child. This lady said she had known such patients, when talk- 

 ing about the little children from whom they had been separated, to 

 sob and moan for hours at a time. But the law is inexorable. It 

 says that a husband may confine his wife in an asylum if he can prove 

 that she is insane and that is a very comprehensive word. In some 

 States the certificates of two physicians will accomplish this purpose ; 

 and, when once a patient is shut up in a ward, there is no deliver- 

 ance that can be depended upon, as I shall presently proceed to show. 

 But not only do the women suffer in this way, for there are men 

 whose affections are as keen and as strong as those of any woman, who 

 long to be with their boys and girls, to see them growing to manhood 

 and womanhood, but who know neither the day nor the hour when 

 that longing shall be gratified. 



In some of our asylums, if not in all, there is a disinclination on 

 the part of the superintendent to take the responsibility of discharging 

 a patient, even when cured. One superintendent explained it to me in 

 this way : " There is," he said, " no certain way of knowing whether 

 a patient is thoroughly cured. Now, if I discharge one such, while 

 his friends do not wish him to be sent away, and he subsequently be- 

 comes insane again, I am held responsible, and it tells against my repu- 

 tation, and, in some cases, I may be obliged to pay the expense of 

 getting the patient back again into the asylum. For that reason," he 

 continued, " I never like to discharge any one until his friends call for 

 him. I keep them informed of his condition, and leave it to them to 

 decide when they will take him away." 



But some one will say, there is a Board of Charities or some such 

 arrangement by which the asylums are visited and such patients lib- 

 erated. In most cases such visitors do not visit in the way the public 

 imagines or the law requires. I have yet to learn of a case of deliver- 

 ance effected by any such board. They go to the asylum, glance 

 through the " crack wards," and then partake of a sumptuous dinner 

 got up for their benefit by the superintendent, and that is all. But 

 as to any careful search and investigation, to see whether there are 

 not patients whose conditions might not be improved, or whose suffer- 

 ings alleviated, I never heard of anything of the sort, nor have I ever 

 talked with any one that had. Now, I am not saying that superintend- 

 ents are cruel, nor that they do not do their duty. I am simply point- 

 ing out a system that affords every facility for the perpetration of the 

 grossest and most outrageous injustice ; and I leave it to the public to 

 say whether any such system ever existed long anywhere without suf- 

 fering the perversions which it seemed to invite. Some way should 

 be devised and a legal enactment would be the best remedy by 



