672 report — 1878. 



Asylum, to be impracticable in most other asylums, particularly where the patients 

 are of a rude, illiterate, and agricultural class. But it is to be borne in mind that 

 the education and training of the insane is chiefly of use, not for the literary and 

 industrial knowledge imparted, but as supplying the best means of restoring the 

 mind to a healthy state, of teaching habits of good order and self-control, and of 

 relieving the tedium of idleness, and so promoting contentment and even happiness. 

 The ignorant, as well as the educated, present subjects capable of deriving benefit 

 from that moral treatment which skilled education and training alone can adequately 

 supply. Amongst the causes which lead to insanity as well as to crime, I believe 

 ignorance to be one ; and it should be noted that out of 8183 patients in the 

 district lunatic asylums of Ireland, only 1899 are set down as well educated and 

 capable of reading and writing well, whilst there are 5516 who can only read and 

 write indifferently, read only, or neither read nor write. Whilst the insane in 

 lunatic asylums are in general so deficient in education, it is noteworthy that 125 

 were students or teachers before they became insane. Here is a body amongst 

 whom several are by no means incapacitated from teaching by their mental con- 

 dition. In this asylum, out of fifteen of this class, several give valuable aid in 

 carrying out our school system. Twelve patients who were learning to read and 

 write in this asylum in 1837 were taught, I should suppose, by a fellow-patient, as 

 there was then no paid teacher in the asylum ; and in 1852 a few of the female 

 patients in this asylum received school instruction for some time under the direction 

 of one of the patients, who had been a schoolmistress, and the result was satis- 

 factory. The circumstances in the public asylums in England and Scotland are, I 

 believe, at least equally favourable to the introduction of education and training of 

 the insane of all classes as they .are in Ireland ; and the advantages vvould, I feel 

 confident, be equally great. 



