38 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



in this field. The first is that tlie oldest lunatic asylum in the metrop- 

 olis of Catholicism was that erected by the Spaniards in 1548. The 

 second is, that, when at the close of the eighteenth century, Pinel 

 began his great labors in this sphere, he pronounced Spain to be the 

 country in which lunatics were treated with most wisdom and most 

 humanity."' 



In the twelfth century madmen were taken to St. Bartholomew's 

 in London and, according to the monkish narratives many wonderful 

 cures were effected. Up to the sixteenth century monasteries and 

 prisons and ecclesiastical hospitals contained cells into which lunatics 

 were received, but it is probable that they were given little care or 

 treatment and that the public at large was the chief beneficiary by 

 their incarceration. In 1547 the first lunatic asylum not under eccle- 

 siastical administration was established in England. The priory for 

 the order of St. Mary of Bethlehem founded by Simon Fitzmary, a 

 sheriff of London, in 1247, in St. Botolph's without Bishopsgate, Lon- 

 don, had for a century and a half been used for the reception of 

 lunatics. In this year the institution, for long before called Bedlam, 

 was transferred by Henry the VIII. to the authorities of the city, 

 with an order that it be converted into a house for the reception of 

 lunatics. It stood in an out of the way place, close to many common 

 sewers and accommodated but fifty or sixty patients. For very many 

 years, however, the place remained a 'horrible prison,' says Sibbald, 

 'and not a hospital in any sense of the word.' "Up to the year 1770 

 the patients were exhibited to the public like wild beasts in cages, on 

 payment of a penny, and they are said to have afforded much sport to 

 the visitors who flocked to see them in numbers estimated at not less 

 than 48,000 annually. Some whose condition was so ameliorated that 

 they were no longer considered dangerous to the public were licensed 

 to go begging. On their left arm was placed an armilla — an iron ring 

 for the arm about four inches long, which they could not get off'." 

 "They wore about their necks," says Aubrey, as quoted by Disraeli, "a 

 great horn of an ox in a sling or bawdry, which when they came to a 

 house they did wind; and they put the drink given them into this 

 horn, whereto they put a stopple." In a Tom of Bedlam song which 

 dates from the first part of the seventeenth century, the comforts of his 

 asylum life are thus alluded to by the licentiated beggar : 



In the lovely lofts of Bedham 

 In stubble soft and dainty, 

 Brave bracelets strong. 

 Sweet whips ding dong, 

 And a wholesome hunger plenty. 



About 1675 when the licensing of beggar lunatics was stopped by 

 law, a new Bedlam three times the capacity of the old was erected in 



