inspired; but the solemnity, the sanctity of mental disease is obsolete, and with it much of that pious sympathy and solicitude which such a view suggested.

It is not calculated to improve morals, that half-naked maniacs should haunt our paths, with the tendencies, as well as the aspect, of satyrs. But all this takes place; or, should perchance the scandal become intolerable, and rustic delicacy wax indignant, these unfortunate offenders are treated as a nuisance, and are ordered to be expelled or tied up. Nor are they merely the sport or prey of the passions of others. They have appetites as well as we. Unchecked, uncontrolled, they obey the injunction to multiply; and, undoubtedly, multiply their own kind. They commit murder; they commit suicide. They are apt scholars in imitating the vices and follies of their rational brethren; while they are inaccessible to the shame, the sorrow, or the punishment; presenting the humiliating spectacle of drunken, ribald, rebellious maniacs. Reason or religion cannot reach them, and they are abandoned to the dominion of sin. Their vices may, in fact, be said to be their best protection; for when they violate the law, the law most wisely and kindly, but not until the outrage takes place, consigns them to the safe keeping of a jail or an asylum.

Many of these persons are under the immediate protection and supervision of their friends, fathers, husbands, children, who may be presumed to be their best, as they are their natural guardians. I deny the accuracy of the presumption. The confession is humiliating to our common nature—but it is true, and it is necessary-that mental disease is regarded by the ignorant, and by many who are not so, with loathing and abhorrence, and leads to disruption and oblivion of all the ties by which man and man, the strong and the weak, are, or ought to be, bound together. It will be found that this affliction establishes a barrier between those most intimately united by blood, or interest, or fellow-feeling; dissolves the contract of duty, affection, and honour; and consigns the sufferer to that exile from the immunities and advantages of his position which would contribute to comfort, and might lead to cure. Within a short period I have seen a maniac, who, bound and galled, and cut by his bonds, had been crushed and confined in a small hole beneath a stair; where, although deprived of every means to inflict injury, and dependent on those who had shorn him of his former powers and privileges, he was shunned by his relatives, as the plague-stricken were formerly shunned. I know that at this moment there are lunatics immured in cellars, closets, lofts; that they are allowed to wander nearly nude in the pitiless storm; that a female, who had exhibited

much vacillation of purpose and lethargy, was locked up for nine months in a garret, and deserted by those who had slept in the same cradle; whose bed was unchanged for weeks; whose food was pushed within her reach by a menial.

But to turn to the experience of a medical man, in a country town somewhat smaller than Dumfries. The facts were collected in 1840, and serve to illustrate many of the evils which result from the absence of a proper provision for the Insane Poor :

1. Two respectable tradesmen, whose only crime is insanity, are confined in S- jail, among felons of the worst description.

2. A woman, still very young, has become completely paralytic in her limbs, from having been heavily ironed by her parents during a period of at least ten years.

3. A young man, of great muscular strength, is allowed to run about the streets, to the great danger of the inhabitants. 4. Another powerful young man, but partially disabled by the loss of a limb, is also allowed to go at large, and often assaults women and children.

5. A woman, the mother of a family, after suffering every privation, and very great cruelty, by personal violence from her husband, has at length been sent, by private charity, to an Asylum in G

6. A young man has been confined in a room, without furniture, for a period of ten years.

7. A woman, the mother of a family, is allowed to run over the country, in a state of utter destitution, and often appears in the streets in a state of nudity.

8. A man, at least 70 years of age, had been chained to his bed for a large portion of that time; and his daughter, a woman about 45, who has been insane for three years, goes at large, quite unprotected.

9. A woman has been confined in a room for 15 or 20 years; and during all this time her cries, depending upon hunger it is said, have been so loud as to prove painful and offensive to persons passing along the street.

In none of these cases, was there, perhaps, actual gratuitous inhumanity, or indifference to suffering; but there was gross culpable misapprehension of the nature of the beings still claiming protection, if not entitled to companionship; there was pusillanimity, and that cold scepticism of the influence of kindness and care, which arrest every endeavour to alleviate or remove mental disease.

But let it be supposed that the relatives of the insane poor, the masters with whom they are bound, the householders with VOL. XVII. N. S. NO. XXVII.-JULY 1844.

R

whom they are boarded, were really the most humane and enlightened guardians that could be selected, and let it be inquired, Is the system a cheap one? It is a most expensive economy. If of every hundred cases of insanity, thirty-five, at a low computation, be curable under proper management, it is quite obvious that every effort to obtain the removal of the disease, is not limited to the benevolent act of restoring reason to the individual, but extends to the relief of the country from a positive and permanent burden. If the disease be left undisturbed in a hundred pauper lunatics, there is almost a certainty that nine-tenths of them become chargeable for life as "impotent poor;" whereas if the recognised and approved medical and moral expedients be resorted to, there is almost a certainty that one-third of them will recover, and be able to support themselves. If a parish, or parishes, maintain 21 furious or fatuous persons under the existing law, that number would be reduced to 7 by the means now advocated. If the cost now is L.210, it would be diminished to one-third. It is perhaps true that the lunatic poor may be farmed out, may be boarded with their kindred, or kenneled with a keeper, for a smaller sum than what is demanded in a well appointed hospital. But, first, were large public asylums erected, say for 500 inmates, the rate of board could safely be made less than what is now exacted; secondly, the labour done by many of the lunatics so hired out, and which, in fact, pays part of their board, might be rendered available, to a certain extent, in lessening the expense of maintenance; and, thirdly, money paid, as it is now paid, is thrown away: it is a premium on the continuance of the disease; it is not expended upon the lunatic.

In whatever way, my Lords and Gentlemen, pauperism may be dealt with, from whatever source funds may be raised, by whatever machinery distributed, it is quite obvious and incumbent that these lunatic who are described poor 66 as at large," should be housed, fed, treated; removed from contamination and oppression; and placed in the most favourable circumstances for the improvement or recovery of those faculties which would give them the wish and the power to become independent. In the epidemic St Vitus' dance after novelty, the craving for new constitutions and organic changes, every man has his plan and panacea to patch up and renew some particular limb of our body politic. I have mine.

As if in illustration of the extent and efficacy of voluntary charity, suggested although the movement undoubtedly was by the neglected condition of its objects, Scotland is already provided with seven large institutions for the insane, all ad

mitting paupers, constructed upon approved principles, and conducted in a creditable manner, but incapable of containing the patients for whom admission is actually demanded, and altogether inadequate to receive those who should be isolated, and who must be so under any change of law. The Perth Asylum and the Crichton Institution, built with the funds of private individuals, are full. Montrose Asylum, chiefly the fruit of the beneficence of one lady, is overflowing, and adding to its accommodation. Aberdeen Asylum, originally erected by public subscription, but subsequently enlarged by means of a private bequest, is crowded. The Asylums in Edinburgh and Glasgow, built by public subscription within the last two years, have nearly their complement; and that in Dundee is in the same predicament. And yet there must be several hundred persons of unsound mind roaming at large, for whom there is no refuge-no receptacle. My recommendation is, that if asylums require to be established for these wanderers, they should be connected with those noble establishments. Let them be separate buildings; let the governors be chosen according to distinct regulations, from different classes of the community; let the funds be managed by different officers; but let the executive staff be the same. There is, however, fortunately, no necessity for so complete a segregation. All the institutions enumerated receive paupers; and are most humanely disposed to admit greater numbers, if accommodation could be provided without any infraction of their charter. If a separate building be necessary, it will, or may, be regarded as an extension of the original plan. In the great majority of cases the very men who now act as governors of the existing asylums would, under any modification of a Poor-Law adapted to Scotland, be the guardians of the Insane Poor. And granting that these difficulties, and many others which may occur, were removed; granting that an equitable and amicable arrangement had been entered into, whereby houses for pauper lunatics were built with the poor's funds, in connection with the present establishments, the advantages to the country and to the public purse would be as follows:-1. The expense of a site would be saved. 2. In most cases, the expense of ground for gardening, farming, &c., would likewise be saved. 3. The expense of medical attendance, and of the whole domestic staff, would be altogether or nearly saved. 4. The poor would be secured the best professional assistance—the services of men who have devoted their lives to the investigation of mental disease, and whose very position is a guarantee of eminence or respectability.

Such,

my Lords and Gentlemen, are the statements which

I would have had the honour to submit to your consideration, had you called before you so obscure a pioneer of improvement, as your very obedient and humble servant,

DUMFRIES, 2d December 1843.

A. B. C.

IV. Letter from Mr Simpson on Hypnotism, and Mr Braid's Theory of Phreno-Mesmeric Manifestations.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE PHRENOLOGICAL JOURNAL.

DEAR SIR,-Happening to be in Manchester in March last, I had the pleasure of forming the acquaintance of Mr James Braid, an eminent surgeon there; who, as is well known to mesmerists and phreno-mesmerists, has gained no inconsiderable celebrity by certain discoveries, alleged to have been made by him, of the nature and cause of the mesmeric sleep, and published, with his proofs, in a small volume, entitled, Neurypnology, or the Rationale of Nervous Sleep [called also by him Hypnotism], considered in relation with Animal Magnetism, and illustrated by numerous Cases of its successful application in the Relief and Cure of Disease. As I had read, with great interest, Mr Braid's work, and the summary of his views in your Number of January last, I considered myself fortunate in obtaining personal communication with him.

I have to acknowledge much courtesy and attention received from Mr Braid, and the greatest assiduity on his part, in introducing me to his most instructive cases, and candidly and clearly submitting to me the proofs of his theory.

Mr Braid holds that there is at least analogy, if not identity, between the mesmeric sleep as induced by others, and the hypnotic sleep, as he certainly more philosophically calls it, as induced by himself.* This sleep, he alleges, is the result of an ex

* In his Neurypnology, p. 21. Mr Braid says:-" For a considerable time I was of opinion that the phenomena induced by my mode of operating and that of mesmerisers were identical; and, so far as I have yet personally seen, I still consider the condition of the nervous system induced by both modes to be at least analogous. However, from

what the mesmerisers state as to effects which they can produce in certain cases, there seem to be differences sufficient to warrant the conclusion that they ought to be considered as distinct agencies." These effects, which he has never been able to produce by his mode, he states to be, "such as, telling the time on a watch held behind the head, or placed on the pit of the stomach; reading closed letters, or a shut book; perceiving what is doing miles off; having the power of perceiving the nature and cure of the diseases of others, although uneducated in medical science; mesmerising patients at miles' distance, without the knowledge or belief in the patient that any such operation is intended." It