64 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



is very limited. In fact, the Belgian asylums send their incurables 

 here so far as they can ; and of the wliole number of patients cared 

 for, seventy-eight per cent are classed as incurable. The system works 

 unfavorably for the colony relatively in a double way — by diminish- 

 ing the number of failures to cure in the close asylums, and by corre- 

 spondingly increasing the number at Gheel. Undoubtedly, the regime 

 at Gheel is favorable even to incurables, but it is more so to curable 

 cases, and it is to be regretted that the colony is not put in a position 

 to make a more obvious proof of it. The proportion of deaths is 

 raised in appearance by the same cause. From 18G0 to 1875, the pro- 

 portion of deaths varied from five to ten per cent, rising to the latter 

 figure only twice. Such proportions are not, however, exaggerated, 

 and, if we consider the hopeless character of the disease of the majority 

 of the patients, we shall find that Gheel, if it can not heal incurables, 

 keeps them in life and health for many years. 



The insane population has recently increased very fast. In 1840 

 there were 717 patients ; in 1855, 778 ; in 1866, 1,035 ; in 1872, 1,118 ; 

 in 1879, 1,383 ; in 1883, 1,663. The increase is partly owing to the 

 growing willingness of the people to receive patients, and partly to 

 the improved administrative and medical service, which makes it more 

 obvious that, with their liberty, persons sent there will not be uncared 

 for. As to nationality, most of the patients are Belgians ; after whom 

 come Dutch, a few French, and fewer Germans and English. Among 

 the cases are some who have passed most of their lives at Gheel. One 

 is recorded as having died after a residence of fifty years ; another 

 stayed there fifty-two years ; and residences of from forty to fifty 

 years are not rare. 



In what does this family treatment consist ? The lunatic is taken 

 from his habitual environment, from the society of those among whom 

 he fell ill. They exist for him only in memory ; they are not there 

 to remind him continually of a melancholy subject, and to keep up the 

 current of ideas in which he is involved. A new life is opened before 

 him, Avith new faces, in a new country ; everything is a subject of 

 distraction to him ; and, on the other hand, he has not the continual 

 feeling that he is in a close asylum, with a door he can not pass through, 

 and a wall over which he can not look. He is not in perpetual con- 

 tact with lunatics, and is not subjected to a depressing influence. He 

 enjoys the privilege of physical activity, and of life in the open air 

 with sound-minded people, who are all the time diverting him from 

 his preoccupations. He has even little children asking him to amuse 

 them, and winning his attention, in spite of himself, perhaps, from 

 himself. He is part of the family ; they become attached to him, and 

 he becomes attached to them. No one laughs at him, no one mocks 

 him, he is never the object of any kind of demonstration, but all take 

 him for what he is, an innocent. That is the family treatment at 

 Gheel — isolation without solitude. 



