52 THE CARE AND TREATMENT OF THE INSANE. 



properly classed as paupers. While we may criticise 

 and blame them for their sins and excesses, who will say 

 that when bereft of reason they should be deprived of 

 the benefits of proper treatment ? It seems incredible 

 that so much opposition could have been aroused and so 

 many exciting controversies could have heen incited over 

 the passage of the bill which marked the most signal 

 triumph ever attained for humanity in this great State. 



This act, however, while it aimed ultimately to entirely 

 abolish county care, exempted three counties for the 

 time, giving them the privilege of coming in under State 

 Care whenever they desired to do so. Those counties 

 were Monroe, Kings and New York. Monroe came in 

 immediately, Kings gave up its old system last year and 

 within the past few weeks a bill has been passed bring- 

 ing New York, the only remaining one, under the State 

 Care system. New York, therefore, enjoys, after sixty 

 years of effort, the proud distinction of being the only 

 State in the Union which has all its insane poor abso- 

 lutely under State care and supervision. 



Now let us examine into the workings of our State 

 hospitals as they exist to-day. They are all thoroughly 

 equipped from an architectural .and sanitary standpoint 

 and differ but little in their main features. I will, there- 

 fore, confine myself to a description of the Hudson River 

 State Hospital, as it is the one in which we are all the 

 most interested. The very title of this institution has 

 been productive of a great amount of good and has 

 played no small part in shaping the policy of similar in- 

 stitutions. To my predecessor, Dr. Cleaveland, belongs 

 the credit of having been among the first to drop the un- 

 pleasant words "lunatic" and "asylum" from the 

 nomenclature of institutions for the care and treatment of 

 the insane. His commendable example has been followed 

 in many states, and six years ago the names of all such 

 institutions in this State were changed by legislative 



