no WILLIAM M. EDWARDS 



ton Marr, the superintendent, that there would be some diffi- 

 culty in retaining the services of good nurses to care for men 

 patients. This is what he said some time ago on the subject : 



"Hitherto, these fears have been groundless and in all one 

 hundred and seventy two patients of both sexes have been 

 admitted since the opening. The nurses in the reception 

 house possess all the qualifications for good nursing and have 

 every opportunity of exercising these qualifications. When a 

 vacancy occurs in the nursing staff, which is rare, there is not a 

 nurse in the asylum but is desirous of filling the post and my 

 experience in this respect extends to the most sensitive and 

 refined of the nurses. One or two nurses, if necessary, have 

 the special duty of nursing any unusually excited or restless 

 patient. These nurses are relieved in a short time by others 

 if their work is unduly arduous. A serious objection that has 

 been urged in connection with the nursing of newly admitted 

 men patients by women is the frequent occurrence in insanity 

 of sexual aberration, often of a shocking kind and the use of 

 profane language or worse. That such cases may come under 

 observation I am fully alive to. That such cases have not 

 arisen may, I think, reasonably be attributed to the new con- 

 ditions under which the patients are placed. The quietness, 

 cleanliness and general appearance of a small ward differing in 

 no respect from a medical ward in a general hospital and the 

 refining influence of women nurses have, I have no hesitation 

 in stating, a restraining influence on the insane tendencies in 

 the patients who are not absolutely delirious." 



At the Woodilee asylum, besides this building for acute 

 cases is a sanitarium for tubercular cases, opened on Christmas 

 day, 1902. A large nurses' home completed late in 1903 has 

 accommodations for 110 nurses. A large well planned labor- 

 atory building, detached from other buildings, was under pro- 

 cess of construction. Fourteen houses for married attendants 

 and artisans were being built by contract when I visited this 

 asylum. When completed there will be forty seven houses on 

 this asylum estate available for employes. 



The sister institution, the Gartlock asylum, received its 

 first patient on the 8th of December, 1896. It was built for 

 570 patients on an estate of 344 acres and had cost, four years 



