physician to the Derbyshire Asylum, while
protesting strongly against the mischievous
belief that insanity is a mysterious spiritual
disorder, incapable of relief by medical
science, says that no language can be too
strong for such a protest; for that false
opinion "causes the patient to be detained at
home until the curative stages have passed
away, and the case becomes hopeless."
Moreover, the fearful ideas which such a creed
engenders, may be understood when it is
stated, that thrice has the superintendent of
this asylum been requested by the parents of
insane persons under his care "to let them
know when the malady of their sons should
become so bad as that they should require to
be suffocated." They looked upon the
suffocation of the patient as no unusual
requirement in the treatment of insanity.

The last Hanwell Report contains what
Dr. Bucknill regards as the first authentic
instance of a man's causing his own death by
knocking his head against a wall. Apocryphal
or poetical reports of the suicide of
prisoners by dashing out their brains against
stone walls are not uncommon, but nothing
worse than a severe scalp wound of the head
has been known to result in recent times
from any such attempt by prisoner or lunatic.
A greyhound in full career running against a
post may dash his head to pieces, but his
pace is sixty miles an hour, and the whole
muscular force of his body is behind his head,
propelling it. Grant that a man can urge
himself forward at a velocity of twelve miles
in an hour, then we may grant, also, that if
he throw all the weight and impelling force
of his body behind his head—as when he is
thrown head-foremost from a horse—he may
produce fatal concussion. But a man cannot
run with speed except with his head nearly
erect; so that if he runs with head erect, he
has the pace without the weight sufficient for
a deadly contact with a wall; and if he
stoops very much, he has part of the weight
without the pace. At Colney Hatch, however,
one patient, on the day after admission,
suddenly rushed forward and struck his head
with much force against the inner wooden
sash of one of the windows of the ward. No
bruise appeared externally, nor did the
patient even show that he was stunned; but
he died five days afterwards; and on
examination of the brain, effusion of blood was
found to have been caused by the concussion.

At Colney Hatch and Gloucester attempts
have been made to compare the variations of
the ozonometer with the number of epileptic
fits among the lunatics in the asylum; but
no connection between ozone and epilepsy
has been traced. It still remains for the
scientific men in charge of our asylums to
solve several problems connected with the
variations of disease within their wards. On
some days all the excitable lunatics in an
asylum will be raving, on another day they
will be marvellously still. Such variations
manifestly are dependent on some subtle
changes in the influence exerted on them by
the earth or air. Whether ozone has
anything to do with them, or if not that, what
else, remains to be discovered.

The report of the Friends Retreat at York
contains some valuable figures. The want
of thoroughly good asylums, apart from the
county asylums for the pauper lunatic, in
which afflicted persons of the middle class
may receive promptly the best help at a
charge never exceeding one guinea a week,
is met for their own body by the Quakers.
This Retreat at York already holds a foremost
place in the history of the amended
treatment of insanity. There is yet another
lesson to be learnt by observation of its
system. Of its hundred and twelve present
inmates, eighty are members of the Society
of Friends, twenty-one are of different
religious professions, and eleven are not in
membership. The asylum, one of the best in the
land, is not only self-supporting, but yields a
considerable surplus for devotion to the
increase of its power to do good. The actual
cost for care and maintenance of the inmates
has been, upon each person, seventeen shillings
a week. The payment is proportioned to
the means of those who are admitted.
Thirty-two do not pay more than six shillings a
week, twenty-three pay from six to ten
shillings, twenty-two pay more than ten
shillings but not more than a pound, six pay
more than a pound but not more than two
pounds. Including a sum of four hundred
pounds for repairs and alterations, the
expenditure of the Retreat was, in round
numbers, six thousand, and the receipts from
patients were seven thousand pounds in the
year last set upon record. The appointments
of the Retreat are good, the diet is liberal,
even carriage exercise for patients is included
in its system. Perfectly good, self-supporting,
middle-class asylums are, therefore, possible
institutions; and it is not necessary that they
should impose heavy charges on the means
of men whose misfortune it is that they have
become as dead in the midst of the families
that were perhaps dependent for the means
of comfortable life upon their daily exertion.
Without the necessity that it should become
self-supporting, to some such purpose, as we
have shown in a former volume, the resources
of Bethlehem, under the wise counsel of
Doctor Hood, are now being applied; but
that is little more than one step on a long
broad road. Let the whole public distinctly
understand two things: that insanity in its
first stage—and then only—is in very many
cases curable; that a visit of a few weeks to
a perfectly well-regulated asylum, when the
first symptoms appear, may be made
pleasanter and without involving any reception
of charity less costly than a change to
seaside lodgings, and will often suffice to establish
a cure. Full recognition of the want of