J827.] Pauper Lunatics. 461 



melancholy, whose aberrations of mind constitute what we term melan- 

 choly madness : 1 do not think the situation at all calculated to effect the 

 cure of melancholy madness. There are some few that go there under 

 acute maniacal sufferings furious madness : the place is perfectly ineffi- 

 cient for the cure of those, I conceive. Perhaps another class may he said 

 to be those who have delusions cases of lunacy : I do not think that 

 place well calculated to remove delusions. That is the distinction I take/' 

 That is, in Dr. Robert Hooper's opinion, the epileptic are properly taken 

 care of at Mr. WVs ; but the other three classes, as he expressly says, are 

 left without any efficient system of cure derive no efficient advantage. 



The facts, then, which may be considered as established, are these : 

 that the patients are too thickly crowded to admit of adequate classifica- 

 tion and exercise in a space, indeed, less than either Bedlam or St. 

 Luke's there are double the number of patients ; that though the instances 

 of positive cruelty may be few, those of the most criminal neglect are 

 many ; that the medical treatment is confined to cases of acute bodily dis- 

 orders ; that nothing absolutely nothing is attempted in the way of 

 mental cure ; that as to any attention in varying the diet according to the 

 varying states of mental disease, little or nothing is done ; that neither the 

 surgeon nor the proprietor can be said to know much of what is going on in 

 the establishment ; that an absolute confidence is placed in one man, who 

 has chained patients, indiscriminately and periodically, unknown to the 

 proprietor, and has described the establishment itself in a manner of which 

 he himself could give no proof, and which is contradicted by the keepers, 

 and who is as adventurous and almost as reckless as the proprietor himself 

 in answering for what he could not personally know. But, above all, it is 

 manifest that the whole system of supervision exercised by the parish 

 officers and their medical men, as well as by the College Commissioners, 

 can give no security whatever for good treatment ; that the whole centers 

 in the confidence of all parties in Mr. Warburton, whose own account 

 proves that he throws the burden of management upon another, whom few 

 persons, after. the disclosures that have been made, except Mr. Warburton, 

 would think deserving of farther confidence. 



If private establishments, then, were the proper places for lunatics, this is 

 riot the place ; but the whole result only tends to set the fact in a more 

 glaring light that nothing short of a public institution, open to constant 

 inspection, under the direction of men who have no personal interests to 

 prosecute, is alone calculated to furnish the protection which the security 

 of society, the rights of humanity, and the sympathies of our common 

 nature demand. 



