will, as we have said, be rendered sufficiently obvious by the documents we purpose to give. Suffice it here to say, that too little of the skill of the artist, so to express ourselves, seems hitherto to have been exerted upon this most interesting branch of medical philosophy and practice. To reason with a madman is, to be sure, to prove ourselves in the same predicament with our patient; but still there have been occasionally such impressions made upon the ima gination of the deranged as to afford hints, perhaps, for enlarging these accidental occurrences into somewhat more of a systematic code than has hitherto been essayed.

'I believe,' says a modern writer, that it will frequently be enough if a dexterous performer out-herod the very extravagancies of the patient, or take up others as similar as possible. Simon Morin was shamed out of the idea of his incorporation with Jesus Christ by the folly of another madman, who supposed himself God the Father. A person who believed that he had been guillotined, and fitted with a wrong head, was cured by a jocular convalescent in the Bicêtre, who managed to turn the conversation on the miracle of St. Denys, who carried his head under his arm, and kissed it as he walked along. The lunatic vehemently maintained the possibility of the fact, and appealed to his own case. "But how," said his companion, in a tone of mockery, "did St. Denys contrive to kiss his own head? With his heel?" It is true (adds our author) that as you drive insanity out of one of its forts it often retires to another; but there let it be attacked by the same arms. I perceive, indeed, that their use requires discretion, and that when one line of attack does not succeed, another must be tried. But none ought to meddle with the mad, who have not discretion and genius into the bargain."

We now proceed to the second division of our subject, in the prosecution of which we shall have facts to unfold, which are not only revolting to our feelings, but disgraceful to our kind. Interest and indolence will be seen to have occupied the place of humanity and duty, to a degree of which it requires full testimony to force us into the belief. The following evidence respecting the state and cir cumstances of the York Lunatic Asylum was produced by Godfrey Higgins, Esq. before the Select Committee of the House of Commons, as the result of a visit which he had made to the Asylum in question. Mr. Higgins is one of the governors, and a magis." trate of the West Riding of Yorkshire.

Have you any knowledge,' he is asked by the Committee, of the state and condition of the York Lunatic Asylum, and the method of treatment of patients in that Asylum? I have. In the year 1813 application was made to me to grant a warrant against a man who had assaulted a poor woman: upon inquiry I found the man to be insane, and ordered him to be sent to the Asylum at York. Some time after he returned, and I was informed he had been extremely ill-used. The name

of the man was William Vickers. In consequence of this I published

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several letters and other documents; upon which various meetings of the governors were held from time, to time, for the course of twelve months, until the 27th of August last; upon which day all the servants and officers of the house were dismissed, or their places declared vacant, except one. Not being properly satisfied with what was done, I thought it incumbent on me to publish a letter to Lord Fitzwilliam, as Lord Lieutenant of that Riding, in which, to the best of my knowledge, I stated every thing that I knew relating to the Institution, and to the abuses which had taken place in that house.' 'In what condition did you find this Asylum when you visited it in the spring assize week of 1814?" 'Having suspicions in my mind that there were some parts of that Asylum which had not been seen, I went early in the morning, determined to examine every place. After ordering a great number of doors to be opened, I came to one which was in a retired situation in the kitchen apartments, and which was almost hid by the opening of a door in the passage. I ordered this door to be opened: the keepers hesitated, and said the apartments belonged to the women, and they had not the key. I ordered them to get the key, but they said it was mislaid, and. not to be found at the moment. Upon this I grew angry, and told them I insisted upon its being found, and that if they would not find it, I would find a key at the kitchen fire-side, namely, the poker; upon that the key was immediately brought. When the door was opened I went into the passage, and I found four cells of, I think, about eight feet square, in a very horrid and filthy situation; the straw appeared to be almost saturated with urine and excrement; there was some bedding laid upon the straw in one cell, in the others only loose straw. A man (a keeper) was in the passage doing something, but what I do not know. The walls were daubed with excrement, the air-holes, of which there was one in each cell, were partly filled with it. In one cell there were two pewter chamber pots, loose. I asked the keeper if all these cells were inhabited by the patients, and was told they were at night. I then desired him to take me up stairs, and show me the place of the women who came out of the cells that morning; I then went up stairs, and he showed me into a room, which I caused him to measure, and the size of which he told me was twelve feet by seven feet ten inches, and in which there were thirteen women, who, he told me, had all come out of those cells that morning.' 'Were they pauper women?' 'I do not know. I was afraid that afterwards he should deny that, and therefore I went in and said to him, Now, Sir, clap your hand upon the head of that woman," and I did so too, and I said, "Is this one of the very women who were in those cells last night?" and he said, she was. I became very sick, and could not remain longer in the room; I vomited. In the course of an hour and a half after this I procured Colonel Cooke, of Owston, and John Cooke, Esq. of Cams Mount, to examine those cells; they had come to attend a special meeting, which I had caused to be called on that day at twelve o'clock. Whilst I was standing at the door of the cells waiting for the key, a young woman ran past me, amongst the men servants, decently dressed; I asked who she was, and was told by Atkinson that she was a female patient of respectable con

nexions. At a special meeting of the governors, which I had caused to be called, I told them what I had seen; and I asked Atkinson, the apothecary, if what I had said was not correctly true, and I told him if he intended to deny any part of it he must do it then; he bowed his assent, and acknowledged what I said was true. I then desired the governors to come with me and see those cells, and then I discovered, for the first time, that the cells were unknown to the governors. Several of the committee, which consisted of fifteen, told me they had never seen them; that they had gone round the house with his Grace the Archbishop of York; that they understood they had seen the whole house, and these cells had not been shown to them. We went through the cells, and at that time they had been cleaned as much as they could in so short a space of time. I turned up the straw, with my umbrella, in one of them, and pointed out to the gentlemen the chain and handcuff which were then concealed beneath the straw, and which I then perceived had been fixed to a board newly put down in the floor. I afterwards inquired of one of the committee of five, who had been appointed to afford any temporary accommodations which they could for a moderate sum of money to the patients, if those cells had been shown to that committee, and I was told they had not. Before I saw these cells I had been repeatedly told by Atkinson, the apothecary, and the keepers, that I had seen the whole house which was occupied by the patients; I was afterwards told by a professional man, (Mr. Pritchett,) that he had heard Mr. Watson, the architect, ask one of the keepers what those places were; Mr. Watson at that time was looking out of the stair-case windows, and he heard the keeper answer Mr. Watson that they were cellars and other little offices. The day after my examination of these cells I went again early in the morning to examine them, after I knew that the straw could only have been used one night, and I can positively say from this examination, that the straw which I first found there must have been in use a very considerable time. Early in the investigation which took place into this institution, several gentlemen came forward to state that they had examined the house, on purpose to form a judgment of it, but though several of them were present when I stated the case of these cells, they did not state that they had seen them. When Colonel Cooke, of Owston, was in one of the cells he tried to make marks or letters in the excrement remaining upon the floor after it had been cleaned and fresh straw put upon it, which he did without any difficulty, and which he will be ready to state to the committee, if required. The day after I saw these cells I went up into the apartments of the upper class of female patients with one of the menkeepers, as I should suppose, about thirty years of age, one of these who were dismissed in August, and I asked him, when at the door of the ward, if his key would not open those doors; I did not give him time to answer, but I seized the key from his hands, and with it opened the outer door of the ward, and then went and opened the bed-room doors of the upper class of female patients, and locked them again; I then gave him his key again. Mr. Samuel Tuke, a Quaker, at York, was standing by and saw me.-Report, pp. 11-14,

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Another case,' says Mr. Higgins, which I laid before the governors was that of the Rev. Mr. Shorey; he was a clergyman reduced to indigence, I believe, in consequence of his mental complaints; he had at times, and for considerable periods, intervals of reason; in those intervals, when he was perfectly capable of understanding every thing that was done to him, repeatedly in the presence of his wife he was exposed to personal indignity, and on one occasion he was inhumanly kicked down stairs by the keepers, and told in the presence of his wife, that he was looked upon no better than a dog; his person swarmed with vermin: and to complete this poor man's misery the keepers insulted his wife with indecent ribaldry, in order to deter her from visiting him in his unfortunate situation; his wife occasionally visited him to bring him such little comforts as she could procure by the labour of her hands, for she worked to support him during the time that he was in the Asylum; he had a gold watch which was lost there, and which his wife could never recover.'-Report. p. 16.

Question by the Committee:

'Do you know an instance of a patient being found out of his proper place? Yes, I do, one was found by Mr. Samuel Tuke and Mr. Pritchett in the wash-house; it was in the month of April; he was standing on a wet stone floor, apparently in the last stage of decay; he was a mere skeleton; his thighs were nearly covered with excrement in a dry state, and those parts which were not so appeared excoriated, as did also some parts of his waist. The keeper who was called said that the patient was not accustomed to leave his bed; that he was a perfect child and could do nothing for himself; that his attendant was killing pigs, and could not therefore attend to him; the bed which he was said to have left was in a most filthy state, and corresponded with that of his body; he was spoken of by all his attendants as a dying man. The further history of this poor creature proved, however, the fallacy of appearances; he was removed to another part of the Asylum, where he was better attended to, and in a few months was so much recovered as to be removed to his parish, in an inoffensive, though imbecile state of mind.'-Report, p. 28.

But these mal-practices, which might be placed to the account of indolence and inattention merely on the part of the superior officers, are not all. Such a system of falsification is laid open to the Committee respecting the register of deaths and burials in the hospital, as well as in regard to the expense of the establishment, as must shock the feelings of all who have the slightest regard even for the most common rules of morality and justice. Upon the whole of this evidence, we are warranted in reminding committees, especially where the well-being of paupers is concerned, that they perform their duty very imperfectly if they omit to investigate the whole conduct of such officers as are employed to carry into effect their charitable designs: the beneficence of the public may otherwise prove destructive of its own interest, and charitable contri

butions merely serve to foster a selfish immorality and a shameful indolence.

We now come to the most prominent feature of the whole Report-the investigation of the economy and management of Bethlem Hospital. Our limits will not allow of any thing like a full analysis of it, and we shall therefore confine ourselves to two extracts-one respecting the state of the Hospital previously to the agitation of the business of inquiry, the other descriptive of its condition subsequently to that event. By these it will appear that much mal-practice, the result of indolence and inhumanity, had long prevailed in an asylum where, if in any institution, the vigilance of duty and the exercise of humanity are loudly called for, and in constant demand.

Mr. Edward Wakefield is asked by the Committee:

"Have you visited Bethlem ?" "I have frequently; I first visited Bethlem on the 25th of April, 1814." "What observations did you make ?" "I was introduced with others, by Mr. Alderman Cox, an official governor, whose feelings being overpowered before we had gone over the men's side, was under the necessity of retiring to the steward's office, whither he was soon after followed by us, in consequence of a message from the steward, who then informed us, that Mr. Cox was prevented from accompanying us farther. We solicited permission to continue our inspection whilst Mr. Cox remained in the Hospital, but this was declined, and we were compelled to close our visits on that day. On Monday, the 2d of May, we revisited the Hospital, introduced by Robert Calvert, Esq. a governor, and accompanied by Charles Callis Western, Esq. Member of Parliament for Essex, and four other gentlemen. At this visit, attended by the steward of the Hospital, and likewise by a female keeper, we first proceeded to visit the women's galleries; one of the side rooms contained about ten patients, each chained by one arm or leg to the wall; the chain allowing them merely to stand up by the form or bench fixed to the wall, or to sit down on it. The nakedness of each patient was covered by a blanket gown only; the blanket gown is a gown formed something like a dressing gown, with nothing to fasten it with in front; this constitutes the whole covering; the feet even were naked. One female in this side room was an object remarkably striking; she mentioned her maiden and married names, and stated that she had been a teacher of languages; the keepers described her as a very accomplished lady, mistress of many languages, and corroborated her account of herself. The committee can hardly imagine a human being in a more degraded and brutalizing situation than that in which I found this female, who held a coherent conversation with us, and was of course fully sensible of the mental and bodily condition of those wretched beings, who, equally without clothing, were closely chained to the same wall with herself. Unaware of the necessities of nature, some of them, though they retained life, appeared totally inanimate and unconscious of existence. The few