270 PROCEEDINGS OF THE SECTIONS. 
must be forwarded to the Colonial Secretary through the 
Inspector-General, within seven days of the admission. As 
further safeguards against collusion or fraud (by section 10 of the 
Act), the two medical certificates in any one case cannot be signed 
by father and son, brothers, partners, or practitioner and his 
assistant, and no certificate for the reception of a patient into any 
institution can be signed by the superintendent or medical officer 
of such institution, or by his father, son, brother, partner, or 
assistant and any one interested pecuniarily in such institution. 
There are penalties (section 11) against signing certificates with- 
out special examination of the patient, and any one wilfully and 
falsely certifying that any person is insane, knowing him not to be 
insane, is guilty of a misdemeanour. ith all these precautions I 
think you will agree with me that the improper sequestration of 
any person is a matter of extreme improbability, and is indeed 
almost impossible, and that the reasons given for the employment 
of special officials in the signature of certificates have no 
weight. 
The statute very properly requires that these documents should 
wn i inite icular form. These formal 
requirements are as follows :—Ist. The date of the examination. 
2nd. The place where it is held. 3rd. That it has been made 
separately from any other medical practitioner. . —_ 
residence, and occupation of the patient. 5th. That such patient 
Insane or an idiot. 
Believers in astrology, fortune-telling, palmistry, and magi¢ § 1 
exist, and modern superstitions of every kind may be reckoned by 
hundreds. The belief in witches and witchcraft is possibly dead, but 
civilization has even more fetishes than savagedom, and there 1s 0 
rerio the strange beliefs and delusions to which persons ar? 
] . 
‘treatment, and I think the answer is, briefly. that he is either in 
such a stage or condition of the malady that he is likely to be 
