at any sacrifice. The due performance of offices about the sick throughout the night is quite a distinct thing from this project with regard to the dirty. If keeping patients clean at night were the one thing needful, it would be necessary merely to multiply Mr. Gaskell's number of visits to make the system completely successful. With perpetual watching and disturbing, every patient might be kept clean. Only get them out often enough.

My second experiment is of little more value than the first; but it shows the very early period of the night when the dejections chiefly occur; and I think that in addition to our present practice of taking patients of dirty habits to the water-closets before bed, getting them out once or twice, between bedtime and 10 p.m., would be productive of all the advantage derivable, in a manner consistent, with our other duties towards the afflicted persons under, our care.

The Commissioners in Lunacy are legally empowered to do no more than enquire as to the management of County Asylums. Practically, however, they do not content themselves with inquiring and submitting their comments. By the way in which they return to their recommendations, it may be supposed they are seeking to take the reins out of the hands of the local governments, to which the law has thought proper to commit them. Their importunity aims at controlling the discretion of those who alone have the right of discretion, and they wish to centralize in themselves the management of asylums, in a way not much in accordance with the spirit of English government. When next we

receive a new law for lunacy, we shall probably find that the Commissioners have obtained legal authority for an interference in domestic management, which they have too often been permitted to assume.

When local boards have become accustomed to their dictation in the domestic management, the Commissioners need only get one word changed, in the 110th section of their act, substituting "direct" for "inquire," to enable them to take the whole executive in County Asylums. But it is not through their auspices that the great and happy change in the management of Lunacy in England has been brought to a pitch attained in no other country; and it may be well doubted whether a transfer of the authority from the County Justices to the Commissioners, would be for the real benefit of the lunatic, and for the advancement of medical science in this department.

J. E. HUXLEY.

I am happy to add, that the Committee of Visitors of

this Asylum have recorded their opinion that the systematic disturbance of the patients during the hours of natural rest, is a very undesirable thing. They decline to make a change in the system of night watching, or, nursing; and they refrain from making any order forbidding the disturbance of patients at night, because deeming the question a medical one, they desire to leave the Superindent free to pursue any practice in this matter, which he may consider to be the most advantageous for the patients.

The New Commissioners in Lunacy.-We would fain have avoided the invidious task of commenting upon these appointments; but the indignant letters we have received from members of the Association inform us, that it is our imperative duty to express our entire disapproval of the principle, or want of principle, upon which the choice of the government has been made. The appointments of Dr. Nairne, Dr. Hatchell, and Dr. Coxe, have been a heavy blow, and a great discouragement to all medical men practising in lunacy, and especially to the class of asylum superintendents-men who upon small stipends devote their lives to onerous and harassing duties, in the hope that some day they may draw one of the legitimate prizes of their professional career. The whole class of asylum superintendents justly feels injured and insulted by being placed under the authority of strange medical men, who have never borne the heat and burthen of the day, who have no claims for such preferment, and who, practically ignorant of the responsibilities entailed in the management of asylums and the treatment of the insane, must come for what instruction may suffice them for an apparently decent discharge of their duties to the very men whose rightful position they have usurped. How can Commissioners who have never resided for twenty-four hours in a lunatic asylum, appreciate the difficulties which occur there? How can they distinguish between unavoidable misfortunes and reprehensible faults? How can men instruct who have never learnt? How can men direct the most difficult of labour who have never submitted to work?

It is fair to say, that in Dr. Nairne's appointment no false pretence was made to knowledge which he did not possess. We are informed that he takes great credit to himself for bringing to the Commission a freedom from prejudice, derived

from his primitive innocence in all that relates to asylums and the insane. As if ignorance were the parent of impartiality.

Dr. Hatchell's appointment, on the other hand, has been defended by the most Irish attempts to make it appear that he does possess experience in the treatment of the insane; attempts which admit the principle that experience is needful in an Inspector or Commissioner, and which by inference condemn the recent appointments. On the 21st of July, Mr. Cairns, the member for Belfast, put a question to Government in the Honea unon this point.

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with the hospital, into which, however, we believe, the hospital students rarely or never enter. We are sorry to hear that insanity is so prevalent among the Irish constabulary, but why did Mr. Herbert omit to mention another possible source of experience which Dr. Hatchell has possessed. He has been household physician to the Lord Lieutenant, who has given him this piece of lunacy patronage; and surely his experience in the castle ought not to go for nothing, if his experience in the police station goes for so much.

At the last hour, the force of public opinion has interfered with the Government arrangements for the commission in Scotland, by giving the protegé of the Duke of Argyle, an able coadjutor in Dr. Browne, the experienced superintendent of the Dumfries asylum. This appointment will give universal satisfaction, except to those corrupt dealers in patronage, who will see in it an emphatic condemnation of their own proceedings.

Memorial of D. L. Dix, praying a Grant of Land for the Relief and Support of the Indigent Curable and Incurable Insane in the United States.

June 27, 1848, Referred to a Select Committee, and ordered to be printed.

To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States in Congress assembled.

Your memorialist respectfully asks permission to lay before you what seem to be just and urgent claims in behalf of a numerous and increasing class of sufferers in the United States. I refer to the great and inadequately relieved distresses of the insane throughout the country.

Upon the subject to which this memorial refers, many to whose justice and humanity it appeals are well-informed; but the attention of many has not been called to the subject, and a few, but a very few, have looked upon some features of this sad picture as revealed in private dwellings, in poor-houses, and in prisons.

Your memorialist hopes to place before you substantial reasons which shall engage your earnest attention, and secure favorable action upon the important subject she advocates.

It is a fact, not less certainly substantiated than it is deplorable, that insanity has increased in an advanced ratio with the fast increasing population in all the United States. For example, according to the best received methods of estimate five years since, it was thought correct to count one insane in every thousand inhabitants throughout the Union. At the present, my own careful investigations are sustained by the judgment and the information of the most intelligent superintendents of hospitals for the insane, in rendering the estimates not less than one insane person in every eight hundred inhabitants at large, throughout the United States.

There are, in proportion to numbers, more insane in cities than in large towns, and more insane in villages than among the same number of inhabitants dwelling in scattered settlements.

Wherever the intellect is more excited, and health lowest, there is an increase of insanity. This malady prevails most widely, and illustrates its presence most commonly in mania, in those countries whose citizens possess the largest civil and religious liberty; where, in effect, every individual, however obscure, is free to enter upon the race for the highest honors and most exalted stations; where the arena of competition is accessible to all who seek the distinctions which acquisitions and possessson of wealth assures, and the respect accorded to high literary and scholastic attainments. Statesmen, VOL. III. NO. 23.

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politicians, and merchants, are peculiarly liable to insanity. In the United States, therefore, we behold an illustration of my assertions. The kingdoms of Western Europe, excepting Portugal, Spain, and the lesser islands dependent on Great Britain, rank next to this country in the rapid development of insanity. Sir Andrew Halliday, in a letter to Lord Seymour, states that the number of insane in England has become more than tripled in the last twenty years. Russia in Europe, Turkey, and Hungary, together with the most of the Asiatic and African countries, exhibit but little insanity. The same is remarked by travellers, especially by Humboldt, of a large part of South America. Those tracts of North America inhabited by Indians, and the sections chiefly occupied by the negro race, produce comparatively very few examples. The colored population is more liable to attacks of insanity than the negro.

This terrible malady, the source of indescribable miseries, does increase, and must continue fearfully to increase, in this country, whose free, civil, and religious institutions create constantly various and multiplying sources of mental excitement. Comparatively but little care is given in cultivating the moral affections in proportion with the intellectual development of the people. Here, as in other countries, forcible examples may be citied to show the mischiefs which result alike from religious, social, civil, and revolutionary

*I wish to remark carefully the distinction between true religion and extravagant religious excitements. The one is the basis of every virtue, the source of every consolation under the manifold trials and afflictions which beset the path of every one in the course of this mortal pilgrimage; while that morbid state which is created by want of calm, earnest meditation, and selfdiscipline, by excessive demands upon the physical strength, by protracted attendance upon excited public assemblies, is ever to be deprecated. The following statistics show how large a part of the patients in some of our best hospitals labor under what is commonly termed religious insanity. I offer a pretty full list from the report, for 1843, of the Massachusetts State Hospital, for the sake of comparison: number of years not recorded:

Many cases not recorded for two years previous to 1844.

Dr. Woodward remarks, that, "the coincidence of this table with the records of other institutions shows, conclusively, that if we have failed in ascertaining causes, we have fallen into a common error."

Seven consecutive and valuable reports by Dr. Kirkbride, exhibit the following results in the Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane. This is not, like the first referred to, a State institution, but has a class of patients from adjacent States, as well as its own State's insane. It will be kept in mind, also, that more than 350 insane patients are in the Blockley almshouse in the vicinity, of which no note is here made.