180 On Insanity. [April, 



greatest wealth, industry, and learning, there there is the greatest 

 poverty and misery and the largest amount of insanity. 



The success of the treatment of the insane, so pleasurably com- 

 mented upon by our legislators and by magistrates in sessions, can 

 be estimated by statistics, and the result of a fan inquiry is re- 

 markably unsatisfactory. 



Thirty-fire years hare elapsed since Prichard"s celebrated treatise 

 on insanity appeared, and during that time the asrlum system 

 and the ''moral management" treatment hare gradually attained 

 a great development; that is to say, the old miseries of the insane 

 hare to a great degree been replaced by conditions which at least 

 are very satisfactory to the public. If insanity were not a curable 

 disease, if it were perfectly beyond the action of remedies, and 

 if it were a special affliction far beyond the influence of material 

 entities, civilization might be congratulated upon baring influenced 

 the minds of men in the direction pointed oat by the philosophy 

 of Christianity. Fine buildings, many of them admirably adapted 

 for their object ; delightful grounds ; elegant corridors, hung with 

 pictures and ornamented with flowers, and decorated with tat 

 a large staff of nurses and attendants ; well-educated and benero- 

 lent medical men; a perfect system of hygiene, diet, and super- 

 rision, and sedulous commissioners and visitors. These are the 

 most prominent accessories of the modern system, and they are 

 most creditable to humanity. But when Hodge"s wife leares him 

 in a snug ward, whose BnrronndingH are quite palatial to her won- 

 dering senses, and returns to her dirty hole of a cottage, to satisfy 

 the hunger of half-a-dozen young children upon bread, dripping, 

 and tea, she wants to know whether all this splendour will core her 

 John safely, quickly, and pleasantly, and what he will think of home 

 when he comes out. The people who sent her John to the asylum 

 know that he will not be cured cheaply, and some hare the curious 

 taste to say that if it were not for those confounded lunatics many 

 healthy-minded individuals might have a hohday now and then. 

 As it is, the rates are the devourers of such luxuries. Some rest- 

 less inquirers have not yet been sufficiently educated up to the 

 proper appreciation of the grandeur of the modern system, of its 

 psychological literature, and of its staff of officials and commis- 

 sioners. Such Bohemians will ask questions which are considered 

 proofs of gross ignorance by the profession : and some have the 

 assurance to assert that the magnificent accessories of the treatment 

 of insanity have not been of great assistance to humanity. They 

 urge that lunatics are not more frequently cured than they used to 

 be ; that the number of recoveries from insanity has not been increased ; 

 that the holding down of violent patients and the fracturing of 

 their ribs by keepers is not a bit better or more Christian treatm 

 than placing them in strait-waistcoats and fastening them down 



