down,—and is she also, whose calling proves
that she has been compelled to sell-dependence,
is she, when her dependence on herself
is lost, to be thrown as a pauper on the
county lunatic establishment? Here is a
new use for Bethlehem, and it is owing
mainly, we believe, to the wise thoughtfulness
of Dr. Hood that upon such wanderers
as these, and upon such only, the
star of Bethlehem now shines. To make that
fact distinctly known, is the whole object of
the present notice.

For the last twelve months and always
henceforward, Bethlehem Hospital has been
and will be an institution for the reception
and cure of no person who is a proper object
for admission to a county lunatic asylum; but
it will admit persons, chiefly of the educated
classes, who with the loss of reason so far
lose the means of livelihood that they cannot
obtain suitable maintenance in a good
private establishment. They will be maintained
and treated while in Bethlehem, free of all
cost to themselves, and also not at the cost
of any living man, but as the just receivers
of a legacy intended for their use and benefit.
It is to be understood that now, as heretofore,
patients in Bethlehem Hospital are of
three kinds. Until Government shall have
brought to their fulfilment certain plans
which it is said to cherish secretly for the
independent custody of criminal lunatics,
there will be criminal lunatics in Bethlehem;
but the building occupied by them is
perfectly detached from the main structure, and
is not under the control of the hospital authorities.
In Bethlehem proper, it is necessary
that a certain portion of the yearly income,
arising from gifts made expressly upon that
condition, should be spent upon the sustenance
and relief of incurable patients. The
number supported by this fund is limited,
and there are always candidates for admission
to the wards of the incurables awaiting
any vacancy that may occur. The rest of
the hospital and the main part of it, the
leading design also of the institution, is for the
cure, not the mere harbouring, of the insane.
It is only to cases which there is fair reason to
hope may prove curable, that admission will
be given. Nobody will be received as curable
who has been discharged uncured from any
other hospital for lunatics, or whose case is
of more than twelve months' standing; or
who is idiotic, paralytic or subject to any
convulsive fits; or who is through disease or
physical infirmity unfit to associate with
other patients. On behalf of any person of
the class we have specified who has become
insane and whose case does not appear to be
ineligible on any of the accounts just named,
application may be made to the resident
physician of Bethlehem Hospital, Southwark,
London, for a form which will have to be
filled up and returned. The form includes
upon one large sheet all the certificates ,
required by the hospital, and every information
likely to be required by the patient and
his friends, or hers.

A patient having been admitted, is
maintained and treated for one year. If he (or
she) be not cured at the expiration of a year,
and there remain hope, that appointed limit
of time is extended by three months, and
perhaps again, and once—but only once—
again, by three' months; but the rule of the
institution is, that patients be returned to
their friends, if uncured at the expiration of
a twelvemonth.

We did not know until we read a little
book on the statistics of insanity, by Dr.
Hood—in which ten years of the case-books
of Bethlehem are collated, with the experience
of other hospitals for the insane—how constantly
insanity is to be referred to a depressing
influence. Three in five of the men,
and a still greater proportion of the women,
who have come and gone through Bethlehem
during a space of ten years, were maddened
simply by distress and anxiety. The other
assigned causes operate also by depression,—
disappointment, over-work, death of relatives,
bodily illness, the gloom which some account
religious, and intemperance. In ten years,
all Bethlehem furnished only six cases of
lunacy through sudden joy; and Esquirol
remarks that the excess of joy which destroys
life never takes away the reason; "and,"
Dr. Hood adds, "he sets himself to explain
away certain cases which are supposed to
support a contrary conclusion." Every case
in his own experience that looked like madness
through excess of joy, he traced, upon
investigation, to a reaction that produced the
opposite emotion. The depressing influence
of solitude is also a frequent cause of insanity;
for which reason insanity prevails in lonely
mountain districts, and is much more
common in England among people who live in
the country than among inhabitants of
towns. A cheerful temper and a busy life,
with generous and wholesome diet, are the
best preservatives of mental health. Against
them it is hard work even for hereditary
tendency to make any head.

Another most important fact, which is
expressed very clearly in the Bethlehem
tables, urges every one who has contemplated
taking advice for any friend become insane, to
lose no time about it. Every month of
duration carries the disorder farther from a
chance of cure. The chances of cure are four
to one in cases admitted for treatment within
three months of the first attack; but after
twelve months have elapsed, the chances are
reversed, and become one to four. Of the
whole number of patients admitted for cure
into Bethlehem, cure follows in three cases
out of five.

In saying this, however, we should give a
false impression if we did not transfer an
estimate founded by Dr. Thurnam upon the
traced history of two hundred and forty-four
patients of the York Retreat, which we find