THE WONDERFUL CENTURY. 



lie enquiry, and sometimes even without the knowledge 

 or consent of their other nearest relatives, or of those 

 friends who know most about them. The well-known 

 cases of Mrs. Weldon and Mrs. Lowe prove that per- 

 fectly sane persons may be thus incarcerated, with the 

 possibility of making them insane by association with 

 mad people and all the horrors of a crowded asylum. 

 These two ladies were incarcerated because they were 

 spiritualists; that is, because they held the same beliefs 

 as Sir William Crookes, the Earl of Crawford, Gerald 

 Masey, and myself have held for the last thirty years, 

 and for holding which, to be consistent, we and hundreds 

 of other equally sane persons ought to have been perma- 

 nently confined as lunatics. The great ability and per- 

 fect sanity of those ladies, and their having influential 

 friends, rendered it impossible to keep them permanently 

 confined; but we may be sure that many less able per- 

 sons have been, and are now, cruelly and unjustly de- 

 prived of their liberty, and in some cases are made insane 

 by their terrible surroundings. The great danger of 

 trusting exclusively to professional opinions and state- 

 ments has been shown in my chapters on hypnotism and 

 vaccination. It is therefore imperative that no person 

 shall be deprived of his liberty on the allegation by any 

 medical authorities of his insanity. The fact of insanity 

 should be decided, not by the patient's opinions, but by 

 his acts; and these acts should be proved before a jury, 

 who might also hear medical evidence, before condemna- 

 tion to an asylum. Asylums for the insane should all 

 belong to public authorities, so that the proprietors and 

 managers should have no pecuniary interest in the con- 

 tinued incarceration of their patients. 



