INSANITY. 335 



its ordinary form of application, one ingenious individual ac- 

 tually suggested, that it would be all the better for patients, 

 could they be let fall into the water from some high tower ! 



Another monster of cruelty a German, by the way 

 gravely -stated his belief, that the weak minds of certain in- 

 sane people might be brought to a fitting conviction of weak- 

 ness through the discipline of letting the patient down into 

 a pit holding snakes, scorpions, and other fright-begetting 

 creatures ! To be brief, the general treatment of insanity at 

 the times now under notice may be described as having for 

 its foundation the belief, that people had no right to be mad 

 any more than they had a right to be thieves, murderers, or 

 vagabonds. 



When, and under what circumstances, did the first dawn- 

 ing gleam of compassion break upon the minds of mad doctors 

 and other guardians of the insane ? At a time not seem- 

 ingly germane to feelings of pity and compassion, yet which 

 will be found to have initiated ameliorations of human dis- 

 cipline tender and compassionate the great French Revo- 

 lution. When the thunderstorm rages, we quail before the 

 fury of its wakening ; we stand aghast at the desolation of 

 its wrath. When the storm has cleared away, the black 

 clouds, riven and wafted, scattered; zephyrs, sweet and re- 

 freshing, stealing by ; the sun shining with tempered blaze, 

 Nature wakening as a spirit from death then we own the 

 thunderstorm to have come in its wrath, that peace should 

 follow, the fury gone by. 



We too often remember the moral thunder of the great 

 French Revolution the blood forgetful of the sacrificial 

 cause on behalf of which it flowed, the many blessings which 

 followed. Let the fact never be forgotten, that the social 

 perturbation out of which emerged Robespierre and Marat, 

 Carder and Fouquier Tinville, also brought forth the decree 

 abolishing judicial torture in criminal cases, doing away 

 with the gabelle, and what concerns us most here ini- 



