injury is done, by suggesting to patients with
unhealthy minds contrasts at which the
healthiest would be disposed to grumble.

Among the more experienced directors
of these institutions, the desire to dispense
with the reception of private patients is
increasing. Among county asylums recently
erected, we can call to mind but one in
which the establishment of a provision for
two classes of patients has been seriously
attempted. If other accommodation can be
found for private cases, we shall desire much
to see their removal from all county asylums.
Considerations of pounds, shillings, and pence,
might still in some cases forbid a change,
but on all other grounds it is in all cases
desirable.

It is inconsistent with our present
knowledge of the accommodation needed for
due care of the insane, to scoop a corner
from a county lunatic asylum for the use of
private patients. We are by no means
blind to the energy and skill which have
been manifested in the management of some
of those asylums which contain two classes of
the insane. In many of the directors, and
almost all the superintendents of such
institutions, there has appeared a steady disposition
to move on in advance of worn-out usages,
to drop mere routine methods, and to act in
accordance with the philosophic principles of
treatment which have been, and are being,
developed in the present day. The asylums
have indeed served as schools, out of whose
teaching almost all that deserves the name
of improvement in the care and treatment of
mental disease in our own country has been
produced; but we must express a firm
conviction, that with the best skill and the best
care, serious inconvenience must result from
the attempt to quarter private cases on
asylums which are properly intended only for
the use of pauper lunatics.

Many county lunatic asylums have in the
first instance been established in a form, or on
a scale, extremely ill-suited to the requirements
of their respective districts. As the world
now runs, it is in every man's power to ascertain
with exactness the number of pauper
lunatics in every district of the kingdom, and
the exact amount of accommodation that has
been provided for them in each district. The
difference, therefore, that has in each case to
be made good, in order to establish the
provision for such sufferers in a fit way throughout
the country, is a plain sum in subtraction.
Why is it not worked out? Why are not
mistakes of construction rectified? Why are
not inadequate grounds enlarged ? In the way
of blundering, for example, we have heard of
one asylum built within the last seven years
to accommodate one hundred and twenty
patients. Its dormitories were able to hold
fifty men, that is to say, tranquil patients;
but there were at first no more than twelve
single chambers for patients whose company
at night would disturb others in their rest.
Yet it is well known that at least one lunatic
patient in three requires a distinct sleeping
apartment, while the rest ought to be lodged
in what are called Associated Dormitories,
containing six, or at the most, eight beds. In
other details of the construction of the asylum
to which we are referring, the same want of
practical intelligence was manifested.
A brief trial proved that the building was
unable to fulfil the purpose for which it had
been designed. All the arrangements had
to be revised, and a large additional outlay
was of course incurred. On the other hand,
the large supplementary asylum for the
county of Middlesex, which has been opened
recently at Colney Hatch, is not more
remarkable for its extent than for the
completeness of its arrangements.

The arrangements now being carried
out by the visiting justices of the asylum
for the county of Stafford, are among the
best of the kind existing in the country.
That asylum had united its resources in
1814 with a charitable fund, and undertook
to receive three classes of patients—those
who could pay for their maintenance, those
who could partly pay, and those who could
not pay at all. After some time the dropping
in of funds enabled the justices to sever their
connection with the trustees of the charitable
fund, and confine their asylum to the use of
paupers only, making room for four or five
hundred of them. The trustees of the
charity, from the share of funds withdrawn
by them at the partition, were at the same
time able to erect a separate institution for
the benefit of private patients only.

When the provisions of the Act 8 & 9 Vict.
cap. 126, shall be entirely fulfilled, under the
efficient supervision of the Commissioners in
Lunacy, the care of the insane poor will be
placed on a safe footing. They will be better
provided for than the afflicted members of a
higher class. So notoriously deficient are the
provisions for the care and cure of lunatics
belonging to the middle classes, that many
people who have worldly substance, do not
hesitate, by a verbal fiction, to apply on
behalf of an insane friend, as on behalf of a pauper,
for admission into the county lunatic asylum.
Such a friend is of course described as a
pauper, by the sanction of the authorities,
who obtain a bond for the re-imbursement
of all expense incurred for the patient. In
one county lunatic asylum with which we
are acquainted, the gross number of patients
admitted during the year 1850 was one
hundred and three, out of which there were
as many as twenty-three fictitious paupers,
for whose maintenance their parishes were
duly indemnified.

Passing from the subject of county asylums,
we come now to speak of lunatic hospitals;
institutions for the reception of the insane,
which have been established chiefly by voluntary
contributions, and are governed by
committees after the manner of other charitable