can only be taken by the chaplains of asylums, to whatever creed they may belong, submitting to receive suggestions and instructions from the medical officers, who are responsible for the treatment. An experienced asylum chaplain, acting in full accord with the physician, may need no direction of this kind, but chaplains new to the very peculiar duties which they meet with in asylums, and to the discharge of which they bring minds trained in theological, but very ignorant of physiological study, will need much direction to prevent their doing mischief if they are disposed to be zealous in private ministration. In the due performance of public worship, there is far less risk of interference with medical treatment, and a far greater amount of benefit to be derived by the population at large of asylums. Even the most excitable and refractory patients may derive moral and spiritual benefit from this source; there is no knowing where the good seed may fall, and in the institution from whence we write, a special service has been given to patients of this class, in order that the devotions of the more tranquil might not be disturbed by their presence. We observed in Messrs. Wilkes and Donaldson's report, that in the Irish asylums "sufficient chapel accommodation is generally provided for both Protestants and Roman Catholics. In most instances the two communions have worked harmoniously together, but at Belfast and at Richmond inconvenience is stated to have been experienced by the use of one place of worship for various classes of worshippers." In the Richmond asylum the Protestant and Catholic services were carried on in the same chapel, in "separately apportioned parts, being divided only by a screen." In other asylums the whole of the chapel is occupied by the two cults alternately. It is well worth consideration whether distinct chapels ought not to be provided, at all events in asylums of considerable size and which contain large numbers of both creeds; such an arrangement would obviate many chances of collision, and would well repay the moderate expense it would entail, by the more orderly and efficient means of celebrating divine worship, which it would provide, and in removing from observation any obtrusive symbols of the rival faiths. A confessional erected in a chapel used for protestant worship, does not look well, even in a lunatic asylum. The appendix of the Inspectors report contains a mass of statistical information on the subject of insanity, the collection of which must have entailed a great amount of labour. Indeed, the appointments of the Lunatic Asylums Office in Dublin appear to be no sinecures. The business, as we are informed by Dr. Nugent, involves a correspondence of more than 7,000 registered letters in the course of the year. We trust we may, without offence, express a hope that the responsible and laborious duties of the Irish Inspectors may receive, under any future enactments, a more just remuneration than that now appointed them. They at present receive only £900 a year, a sum by no means adequate to their position and the work they have to do, and invidiously small as compared with the salaries of Commissioners in other parts of the kingdom. Scotland, with a population of 2,800,000, has two Commissioners in Lunacy, with salaries which the Secretary of State can raise from £1,000 to £1,200 a year, and two Assistant Inspectors, with salaries of £509 each. England, with a population of 18,000,000, has six Commissioners in Lunacy, with salaries of £1,500 a year, and travelling expenses calculated on a very liberal scale. Ireland, with a population of 8,000,000, has two Inspectors of Asylums, whose powers are greater and responsibilities heavier, than those of the English Commissioners, inasmuch as they take an active part in the management of public asylums, and of the insane generally, throughout the kingdom. They have a seat at the boards of all the public asylums; they advise the Government respecting the appointment of asylum officers, and in the administration of justice in doubtful cases of criminal lunacy; and they entirely manage the central lunatic asylum. The English Commissioners exercise actual authority only in the metropolitan district, and have the mere right of inspection in public asylums. Yet the two Irish Inspectors only receive £900 a year each, and their travelling expenses are calculated upon a scale which cannot leave the slightest margin, even if it is adequate to the actual outlay. In conclusion, we have to thank Dr. Nugent for a full, and most valuable report, replete with useful and exact information, and with scientific interest. His claim for the meed of practical efficiency for the Irish asylums is well put, and from personal observation we know it to be a just repre sentation. "The pages of a Parliamentary Report are, perhaps, not altogether suited to digression from fiscal and statistical details, still we may venture to remind your Excellency of the depressed state of Ireland for a period of nearly five years, with landed property in many places almost confiscated to poor rates, during which time the district asylums of this country were entailing additional expense on the community at large. The cost of erection of these various institutions has been already given in detail, and we would now only observe that the Governors of them, apprehending the assessment which for a certain time must be levied to meet Treasury repayments, consider it a duty to restrict in every possible way all expenses save those absolutely requisite, and not to replace fixtures or furniture, even though objectionable in their eyes, till completely worn out. We think, however, that economy may be occasionally carried out to an unprofitable extent, and that stopping short, and not efficiently following up a regular system of management, would be almost as bad as not to have undertaken it at all. "Generally speaking, a deficiency of furniture, and with it a certain air of discomfort is noticeable in Irish institutions for the insane, a want which we trust, with the advancing prosperity of the country, will be gradually obviated; yet, when your Excellency, so long and thorougly cognizant of the social condition of the population, recalls to mind what on your frequent visits to District Asylums you could not fail to remark, and reflects that a large proportion of their inmates, whilst possessed of reason, had been strangers to the personal comforts of life, and, we regret to add, in many instances, from their abject state of destitution, to the decencies of civilization, but still protected by an innate sense of virtue and decorum, huddled together in those miserable abodes which present themselves, in quick succession along our public thoroughfares, on the edge of bogs and sides of mountains, without adequate food or raiment, whole families frequently occupants of a single apartment,' perhaps of a common bed-that the same individuals placed in asylums, labouring under madness in all its varied forms, are educated for the first time to habits of order and cleanliness, have servants at all hours to minister to their personal wants their dress and bedding duly attended to, meals served regularly, with a liberal allowance of animal food, a luxury before almost untasted by them—we may, as tending to social advancement, no less than for curative objects, so far regard our public establishments for the insane with unmixed satisfaction." We regret that our limits do not permit us, at this time, to present to our readers the sound and well-reasoned views of the Inspectors on the subject of criminal lunacy, or the valuable tables on the statistics of insanity. We hope to be able to do so in a future number; but we cannot allow the present occasion to pass without a word of cordial farewell to Dr. White. Dr. White was for many years the medical officer of the Richmond Asylum, and he brought from thence to the service of the Government, a large experience on all matters connected with the duties of his office. These duties he has discharged in so amiable and gentlemanly a manner, and in so temperate and just a spirit, that his retirement is felt by all connected with lunacy affairs in Ireland, to be a great and almost a personal loss. In his late colleague, indeed, the present report proves that he leaves behind him a most able and experienced administrator, who will permit his loss to be felt as little as possible. In expressing the earnest hope that Dr. White may recover from the effects of his accident, and enjoy, in good health, many years of the repose from toil and anxiety he has so well earned, we feel that we have the heartiest concurrence of all our associates. J. C. B. Prostitution, considered in its Moral, Social, and Sanitary Aspects, in London and other large Cities, with Proposals for the Mitigation and Prevention of its Attendant Evils. By WILLIAM ACTON, M.R.C.S. (pp. 189.) Churchill, 1857. Esquirol states, and his opinion has been often quoted, that one twentieth of the female lunatics in the Salpêtriere had been prostitutes; and, although it may be difficult to verify exactly the per-centage of cases of mental disease caused by prostitution and its results of sorrow, want, and care, yet all conversant with the character of the female population of our county asylums, must be aware that a large proportion of them have been persons of loose life, and that hence any inquiry into the varied aspects of prostitution, such as is undertaken in Mr. Acton's work, is a question adapted to the pages of this journal, as one having a more or less direct bearing on the objects of the Association. Moreover, it is one which, in its wide-spread influences, is day by day attracting more and more of public attention, and on which our opinion as professional men is frequently in society asked for. We thus feel it to be a subject within our vocation, and therefore gladly avail ourselves of Mr. Acton's careful and well-considered work, to lay before our readers a general statement of the present aspects of prostitution, particularly in London, which, indeed, for some years past, has been an object of investigation with us. The numerical extent of prostitution would surprise those who have not made any definite examination of the question. "The dimensions of prostitution (says a recent writer in the Lancet, 7th Nov., 1857,) have been very accurately measured. We know, on the best authority, (Mr. Talbot and other careful observers calculate the number of brothels in London at 5,000, and the number of prostitutes at 80,000,) that one house in sixty in London is a brothel, and one in every sixteen females (of all ages,) is de facto a prostitute. "In England and Wales (he continues,) nearly 50,000 illegitimate children are born, whose mothers have all taken. the first step in prostitution. And this number, it is supposed, scarcely amounts to one-third of the actual cases where wrong is done, yet no evidence of shame transpires." On the other side of the question, as relates to the male population, any one at all acquainted with the life and habits of young unmarried men of the present day, be it the gallant defenders of old England, by land or water, be it the younger members of the learned professions, or those engaged in mercantile pursuits, the brave young heroes from behind our counters, or single young men otherwise engaged in domestic service, of all the same sad fact must be admitted, that reckless promiscuous intercourse with loose women is the rule, continence the exception of their lives, that never was the power of "The social sin that wars against the strength of youth," stronger or more wide-spread than to-day. The warning of the Jewish Seer, "the spirit of whoredom is in the midst of them, and they have not known the Lord," mournfully applies to London in our generation. And yet of all sins opposed to the law of nature, promiscuous intercourse with the paid harlot, whoremongering as opposed to concubinage (the latter as being a sin or act according to nature, the former contrary to it,) is the most blighting in its effects on the moral as well as physical life. Truly is it, "The sin of all most sure to blight, The sin of all that the soul's light, The lines of our great countryman, Burns, may well be here re-called: "The sacred lowe o' weel-plac'd love, Luxuriantly indulge it; But, never tempt the illicit rove. Tho' naething should divulge it: * Hosea, v., 4 VOL. IV. NO. 24. U |