clothing for the inmates of the Wilts County Asylum, was supplied by the Asylum for the North and East Ridings of Yorkshire,— "An institution" (we quote Dr. Thurnam, Superintendent of the former) " in which the industrial system has been developed to the fullest extent, and where it was made entirely by the patients. This is probably the first instance of an Asylum entering in a contract of such a kind. Great interest was excited among the patients, who were made aware that they were preparing clothing for another Asylum; and quite a sensation was manifested when two carts, laden with heavy bales of woollen clothes, and shoes, shirts, and dresses for the women, left the doors of the North and East Riding's Asylum. It is but justice to state, that the articles thus supplied have proved satisfactory, both as to quality and workmanship." age, In the County Asylum referred to, about five-sixths of the inmates are systematically set to work at occupations suited to their strength, and previous habits of life. One half the men are employed in the garden and farm, the other half at their various trades. There are workshops for tailors, shoemakers, painters, carpenters, smiths, bakers, &c. The women are chiefly employed in household work and the laundry, and in making up linen and clothing. The value of the labor contributed by under two hundred patients to the farm only, estimated at a very low rate, is reported to be worth £500 per annum. In his Second Annual Report, the able and energetic Superintendent, Mr. Hill, mentions special examples of the curative influence of labor, of a suitable character, and resorted to at the proper stage of the mental disorder :- "A young man, who had been apprenticed to a wheelwright, and whose father is insane, was admitted in a state of violent mania, which left him in a condition of the lowest mental capacity. When roused from his apathy, it was to commit some improper act, or to attempt to escape. He was entirely heedless of his personal comforts, and his habits would soon have degenerated into the worst description. Many trials were made to stimulate him to useful exertion in the garden. No sooner was he engaged in the carpenter's shop, than his intellects began to brighten he made a wheelbarrow for the bricklayers, and commenced a pair of wheels for a water-cart; his recovery was very rapid; he was discharged cured, and has remained well upwards of a year. The wheels which he left unfinished, were completed by a melancholic man, who has been in confinement twenty years, and who, since building the water-cart, has been daily employed in the carpenter's shop, and has undergone very great improvement both mentally and bodily." Patients are transformed into excellent servants : "One of our domestic servants," Mr. Hill states, "was first admitted as a patient from another Asylum. On her removal here, she smashed the windows of the carriage, and lacerated her those who from time to time witnessed her vioforehead, arms, and hands. It was supposed by lence, that she was a confirmed and mischievous idiot. With much satisfaction is her history now alluded to, in consequence of her general good conduct." The history of another female patient is referred to, who became insane after a faithful servitude of seventeen years in one family, who was very riotous at first, but was tranquillized by being appointed to fulfil the duties of under-laundry maid, and in a few months was restored to health and domestic service. Schools constitute a part of the moral management of the insane. Patients, apparently altogether incapable of instruction, have made considerable progress in reading, writing, drawing, music, &c. The combination of industrial and scholastic training is perhaps the most efficient method possible for the development or restoration of the intellect. Its advantages have been fully tested in establishments expressly instituted for the reception of the idiotic and imbecile. This is a distinct branch, however, of our subject, and is worthy special notice and inquiry. Amongst the recreations provided for the inmates of County Asylums, concerts, balls, and picnic-parties, are the most useful and available. There are few Asylums in which there is not a band of music, constituted of the inmates exclusively, with, perhaps, the exception of the leader, or one or two musical attendants. Accounts of large entertainments in English Asylums are not unfrequently found in the newspapers; we therefore subjoin an account of a first attempt of the kind made at the Asylum at Meerenberg, in Holland. To the good people in that country the thing was perfectly surprising, and considered almost rash; and, when a detailed account of it was published in the papers, it excited a general interest and sympathy throughout the whole country. We extract the following from a communication, by Dr. D. H. Tuke of York, printed in number XXVII. of the Journal of Psychological Medicine, July, 1854, entitled, "The Asylums of Holland; their Past and Present Condition." It is part of Dr. Van Leeuwen's ac count: 1855.] home, where a supper of chocolate and cakes awaited them. After the supper, the evening was spent in the same satisfactory manner by in-door entertainments, and the following night was as quiet as could have been wished." This fête created a "sensation" in Holland ; contributions were sent towards defraying the expenses, and one of the great statesmen and best national poets of the country celebrated it in a poem, in which, we doubt not, the Dutch nightingales were invoked. Dr. Van Leeuwen, an ex-official of the Asylum, responded in rhyme to the national poet. "As is usually every year the case in Holland, on the 15th of April, the nightingales, the messengers of spring, appeared and delighted, in hundreds, the beautiful neighborhood of Meerenberg and the village of Bloemendaal. As Easter Monday-a day on which the working-classes in Holland spent the afternoon as much as possible in family parties, walks, and country feasts-was approaching, it seemed but right to prepare on that afternoon a similar recreation for the unhappy patients, who never, since their deep affliction, had enjoyed their former customs, and some of whom had a lively recollection of the old system of treatment, by which they had been confined to dungeons, and, like brutes, fastened by chains. But, after all, there is a sad congregation To make the patients acquainted with the character and order of the feast, large Programmes of of frail beings in Asylums, and discipline the Fete Champetre, to be held in the afternoon must be enforced. Dr. Webster finds that, of Easter Monday by the inhabitants of Meeren- amongst 1,720 persons recently admitted berg,' were attached to the walls of the wards a into Bethlehem Hospital, more than onefew days before; and to every one who required it a ticket was granted. The patients were filled third, or 624, were reputed to have either with joy when they heard that large tents would be meditated or attempted to commit suicide. The erected in the meadow to receive them, with a pro- ratio was much higher as to the number of vision of Easter cakes, one thousand eggs, plenty inmates considered violent; for these amountof pickle, and bread, and bear; that Punch anded to 909, or more than 52 per cent. Such Judy would play; that there would be a shop kept by an old woman, boiling, selling, and distributing fresh oil-cakes; and that all kinds of games would be performed, and matches, for which prizes would be given to the winners; and, lastly, that a little band of music would attend the whole. The very anticipation of all these good things made them forget their sorrows. sons. being the proportion at a time when a nonprovocative treatment of the lunatic is the rule, what would it be when restraint was the rule? Doubtless, violent maniacs would be in a greater porportion. It is to be remembered, too, that the violence of the insane is but a reflexion of the violence of the sane: tory chairs, &c. "At four o'clock in the afternoon of Monday, hence the probability that, when hanging and the great bell of the Asylum called all the pa- flogging were amongst the common punishtients up to a large corridor, where they were arments for crime, and bear and bull baiting, ranged in the order directed by the programme. Their number amounted to 140, making, with prize-fights, cock-fights, &c., were the comthe attendants, friends, and visitors, about 250 per- mon amusements, the conduct of the maniac All being ready, they went out, preceded would be correspondingly violent. Violence by the band of music, through a broad beautiful was met by violence, and so the fury of the avenue, behind the Asylum, to the field. Here maniac was more bitterly roused, to be medithey were received and addressed by their Physically cowed by bleeding, tartar-emetic, rotacian and friend, whose speech was listened to with So defectively was the great attention. After the address, the male and treatment of the insane understood, little female patients went to their respective tents, where they were treated with cake, eggs, and beer, more than a century ago, that the first Act then the matches and games began, varied as of Parliament which takes cognizance of lumuch as possible, and sometimes interrupted by natics, (17 Geo. II., c. 5,) enables any two the distribution of prizes, and by refreshments. Justices to cause them to be apprehended, I will not enter into a detailed description of the to be locked up in some secure place, "and feast itself; it was similar to ordinary popular there chained:" if the pauper's settlement recreations, such as every one has witnessed once in his life; perhaps, there was even more orderly should prove to be in another parish, then he conduct, and less extravagance, owing to the bewas to be forwarded thither, and then “lockhavior of the attendants and the attention of the ed up and chained" by the Justices of that officers, who were masters of the ceremony. Cer- district. Pinel was, undoubtedly, the first tainly the refreshments and Punch and Judy who broke through the established prejudices caused the greatest delight. as to the necessity of mechanical restraint in the treatment of the insane, and the protection of society from their violence. He showed experimentally that freedom of the limbs, and occupation of the body and mind, were the best composers of the perturbed spirit. For a long period after Pinel, the "Only four out of the 140 patients required to be taken in, on account of excitement and a desire to escape; and when at half-past six o'clock the bell of the Asylum gave the signal that the feast was ending, all the patients followed the officers and attendants without any difficulty, and arranged themselves again in the order required to return doctrine was still held, that punishment was an effectual moral means of cure; and it is of importance to discriminate between the doctrine itself, and the wanton cruelties which arose out of the application of it. In the Report of the Commissioners before us, this doctrine is discussed in rather a singular manner; for they, having addressed a series of questions to the Superintendents and others connected with the Lunatic Asylums in England and Wales, as to the disuse or employment of mechanical restraint and solitary imprisonment, (seclusion is the euphemistic term adopted,) had returned to them statements as to the opinion and practice of a large number of those who have the management of the insane. The conclusions drawn by the Commissioners are as follow: "As the general result which may fairly be deduced from a careful examination and review of the whole body of information thus collected, we feel ourselves fully warranted in stating, that the disuse of instrumental restraint, as unnecessary and injurious to the patients, is practically the rule in nearly all the public institutions in the kingdom; and generally, also, in the best-conducted private Asylums, even those where the 'non-restraint system,' as an abstract principle, admitting of no deviation or exception, has not in terms been adopted. "For ourselves, we have long been convinced and have steadily acted on the conviction, that the possibility of dispensing with mechanical coercion in the management of the insane is, in a vast majority of cases, a mere question of expense, and that its continued or systematic use in the Asylums or Licensed Houses where it still prevails, must, in a great measure, be ascribed to their want of suitable space and accommodation, their defective structural arrangements, or their not possessing an adequate staff of properly qualified attendants; and frequently to all these causes combined." Looking at the matter from the commonsense, and not the sentimental point of view, the conclusion is inevitable, we think, that, amongst the 23,000 insane and imbecile persons in the Asylums and workhouses of England and Wales, there must be a proportion amenable to those common motives of action which operate on mankind at large. We hardly think it more practicable to regulate an Asylum without punishments, than a school, using the word punishment in the sense of something painful, inflicted on an individual in consequence of actions forbidden to be done, and as something to be escaped by the cessation from those actions upon which it follows. Such, we say, is the common sense inference from daily experience of human nature; and such, we affirm, is also the practice in many of those Asylums, the managers of which take large credit to themselves for superior benevolence and skill. "Immersion in the cold bath," and "a continuous stream of cold water on the head," besides the shower-bath, are used in the Denbigh Asylum, where "not the slightest mechanical restraint" is used. How the attendants contrive to inflict these painful processes on their patients without very energetic restraint, is a mystery to us: indeed, we frankly avow, we do not believe it is done; for the patient is sure to offer an energetic resistance. Another Superintendent remarks: "Occasionally, it is found necessary to check acts of violence and insubordination by the shower-bath," a statement which might, we think, be made by several of those who are utterly silent as to the modes of punishment they adopt. Again, we find that in the Devon County Asylum, it is believed that "mechanical restraint in the treatment of the insane is like the actual cautery in the treatment of wounds, a barbarous remedy, which has become obsolete." &c. Fear of the consequences of actions, Dr. Bucknill thinks, is brutalizing and degrading it is a motive that "belongs to man and the animals!” “It was the brutalizing influence of fear, and the degrading sense of shame, which constituted the live virus of mechanical restraint." These are fine words; but what is Dr. Bucknill's practice? This:-that an average of four persons per week were placed in seclusion,that is to say, in solitary confinement. If possible, the patient is induced to go to prison "before the employment of force has become needful to enforce it by superior physical requisite" but, if not possible, well, it is strength." Dr. Bucknill adds : "It cannot be denied, that insanity frequently displays itself by excitement of the malignant passions, and that some of the most depraved of mankind terminate their career in Asylums. Towards these, seclusion must occasionally be to prevent the welfare of the many from being employed in its harsher form, as a coercive means sacrificed to the passions of the few." To restrain mischievous and malignant hands in a sleeve for a couple of hours is "barbarous" and unpardonable restraint: solitary imprisonment of the owner of the hands--"coercion" (not restraint) within four walls-is benevolence itself. Thus it is that common sense triumphs in acts over sentimentality in words. Another Superintendent, who never employs mechanical restraint, terms solitary confinement the "placing an excited and turbulent patient in a room by himself." "It is clear," he adds, "that some mode of preventing disturbance in the wards of an Asylum, and of obviating the risk of injury to individuals there, must always be more or less necessary;" and he "can conceive nothing so simple and effectual" for the purpose, as this solitary confinement. me Dr. H. W. Diamond, of the Female Division, Surrey County Lunatic Asylum, is at least out-spoken, when he declares that " chanical restraint is never necessary, never justifiable, and always injurious in all cases of lunacy whatever!"-and expresses his belief, "that any person who would now use personal restraint or coercion, is unfit to have the superintendence of an Asylum." Will Dr. Diamond blush when he reads the varied communications to the Commissioners, and finds how many experienced and judicious Superintendents do concede that a case may occasionally demand personal restraint? We hope he will. Or will Dr. Bucknil blush when he reads Dr. Diamond's statement ?— Yet Dr. Bucknill, out of 460 patients, had an average of four in seclusion per week, for 27 hours! . It would be difficult to reconcile these discrepancies, if it were not obvious that Dr. Diamond is stating, as facts, what are really inferences:-not having ordered restraint or seclusion, he infers that none of his attendants have practiced either. But Dr. Diamond eats and sleeps, and can only be in one place at a time, like other men; and it is probable that his attendants have the common sense to use both, in a quiet way, like the men to whom a mawkish sentimentality is disagreeable, and not to be indulged in. That many of the statements from the Superintendents of the large County Asylums, as to the absolute disuse of mechanical restraint and seclusion, are given bonâ fide, we make no manner of doubt: we have equally little doubt, that they are often deceived and misinformed. The veteran and experienced Conolly, in the subjoined statements, will carry with him the assent of all who are practically conversant with the management of large establishments, and whose shrewdnesss has been sharpened by experience : "The supervision of the attendants in the large Asylums is almost always inefficient. The female attendants do not often remain long enough in them to learn their duties; and in some of them only learn to avoid trouble, by having recourse to mechanical restraints in every difficulty. The male attendants usually retain their situations longer; but, in consequence of the duties of a larger Asylum being generally too great, in proportion to the medical staff, they know themselves to be, for a considerable portion of the day, free from observation; and they learn to baffle even the inspection to which they are subjected, by signals and other acts of confederacy, and, in some cases, establish an organized ruffianism, which long escapes detection, and which some frightful outrage at length reveals. . . . Attendants trained in such institutions become, in many cases, the attendants on private patients, and are the greatest obstacles to the general disuse of mechanical restraint in private practice." We are sorry to have thus to dispel the illusion in which the non-restraining and nonsecluding Superintendents of several large from believing the latter to be the Paradises Asylums indulge; but they must excuse us of the foolish that they think them to be. Lunatics are not angels, and attendants are, after all, but men, burdened with an irksome, often dangerous duty; and ready, as all men are, to lighten their burden by all practicable means. Too much is expected from them; so much, indeed, that it is little short of an impossibility. false sentimentality in Mr. Hill's communicaThere is, we think, the least of cant and tions. Out of 154 cases under his care, he confesses that only 22 were of the curable class. But, if he cannot boast of cures amongst "epileptics, paralytics, and idiots," he can say this : 66 Change of habit in the dirty, the quelling of cifying the daring and violent, reconciling the strife with the turbulent, humbling the proud, parestless, exciting the drone to exertion, the apathetic to observation, the suicide to love of life, the homicide to dread of crime, the thief to an appreciation of honesty, the destructive to esteem value, the slothful to early rising, the melancholic to share in the enjoyments of the cheerful, the reserved to social communion, the mute to speak, dispirited and fretful to happiness, and the morose the hypochondriac to obliviousness of the past, the to civility, are attainments more or less to be achieved." Thus, in his Annual Report to the Magis- | with nearly all Superintendents and visitors," trates, Mr. Hill writes : To "Upon the subject of restraint, I may remark that, in order to treat the most violent lunatics with the greatest mercy, as well as safety, personal restraint is now and then necessary. dispense with such auxiliary and remedial measures, would be to incur risk, prolong the paroxysm, and probably reduce the patient to a state of dan ger, if not of hopeless exhaustion." As a corollary to this, we add the views of Dr. Forbes Winslow, the able Editor of the "Journal of Psychological Medicine:" "In the management of the insane, and in the conduct of Asylums, both public and private, the principle of treatment should consist in a full and liberal recognition of the importance of extending to the insane the maximum amount of liberty and indulgence compatible with their safety, security, and recovery; at the same time subjecting them to the minimum degree of mechanical and moral restraint, isolation, seclusion, and surveillance, consistent with their actual morbid state of mind at the time." And now we must say a few words as to the restoration of the insane to the world at large. It is not (our experience shows) an easy thing to get out of an Asylum, unless there be a complete restoration to health. Often it is the interest of the relatives, or of the parties by whose order the person has been received, and at whose instance he is dismissed, that he should remain in seclusion; often, the interest of those under whose care he is placed. If in a County Asylum, he is willingly retained, because his labor is valuable, and helps the Superintendent, or Steward, to send in a favorable balance-sheet to his employers: if in a private Asylum, the more quiet he is, the more profit is derived from the money paid for his board and lodging. Thus it may happen that an individual is immured for life in a Lunatic Asylum, who would be happy without its limits, and who only wants a little kind superintendence to do very well. This is not a mere supposition: an instance came lately under our own observation, of a gentleman who was accidentally rescued from a life-long detention of this kind. Nor is it to be supposed that the Commissioners are omnipotent. They are only six in number, and have to visit 19,000 persons annually! We must not omit to notice the most unfortunate of all lunatics, those laboring under the imputation of crime, having been acquitted, as the phrase is, on the ground of insanity. The Commissioners, "in common object to the association of criminal lunatics with the ordinary inmates of Asylums. It gives the notion that the institution is a place of detention, rather than a house for the alleviation or cure of insanity; and residence therein is associated, in the minds of the inmates, or their relatives, with the degrading idea of criminality and imprisonment. But, in the present state of the law, it is obvious that a great injustice would be done to that large class of unfortunate men who have committed crime while maniacal, simply because no one had taken the trouble or reAs sponsibility of restraining their actions. it respects the insane generally, the Commissioners remark, that a large number, if they had the opportunity, would commit murder, or other heinous crimes, and that, in fact, many of them, before they are sent as insane patients to Asylums, have committed acts for which they might, but for the merciful consideration of those who dealt with them, have been brought within the provisions of the Criminal Lunatic Acts. That they are treated, not as being criminal, but merely as insane, is, in many cases, matter of accident. No real distinction, in such cases, exists between criminal lunatics, and ordinary lunatic inmates of Asylums afflicted with homicidal mania, or other dangerous or criminal propensities. The Commissioners fairly and justly argue, that persons charged before Magistrates with indictable offences, and then found, on due inquiry, to have been insane at the time of the offence, should, with certain important exceptions, be dealt with as lunatics not under proper care, and not be committed for trial. Indeed, the only criminal lunatics should be convicts who have become insane in prison, and lunatics guilty of high treason, or homicidal violence. Even persons who have been tried, and on the ground of insanity acquitted, should not be detained in an Asylum after the recovery of reason. The following history will illustrate the working of the law. G. W., in a fit of delirium tremens, stabbed his wife to death in the thigh, dividing the femoral artery. He was committed to York Castle, whence he was sent to the West Riding Asylum, near Wakefield. On the recovery of reason, nothing could exceed the horror and remorse felt by him at the knowledge of his crime, (for remembrance of it he had not the least,) and he often declared, with tears, that he had "loved his wife as his own soul." In a long and touching letter addressed to his attendant at the Asylum, |