In mental derangement, bodily disease is undoubtedly the exciting cause. This bodily disease may be and often is produced by moral causes, and by moral causes it may not unfrequently be removed. Sudden reverses of fortune, may so highly excite the mind, as to inflame the brain, and thus produce insanity. And the soothing influence of kind treatment may allay this excitement and cause the blood gently to glide on in its accustomed courses till reason and serenity are restored. The medical treatment of the insane, is a subject which belongs exclusively to the physician. The moral treatment, to which such individuals should be subjected, is a matter of interest and importance to all. Many a maniac has been restored to family and friends, and all the joys of social and intellectual intercourse, through the skilful and judicious influence, of mind upon mind. Stern looks and harsh expressions may terrify into momentary subjection, while at the same time, they are confirming the hopelessness of the disease. A maniac in the Pennsylvania Hospital, was in the following singular manner, cured of a propensity to suicide. He expressed a strong desire to drown himself. The steward of the Hospital seemed to favor the wish, and prepared water for the purpose. The ́insane nian jumped in, and the steward endeavored to plunge his head under the water, in order, he said, to hasten his death. The maniac not exactly relishing the sensation resisted, and declared that he would prefer being burnt to death. "You shall be gratified," said the steward, and immediately applied a lighted candle to his flesh. "Stop, stop," said he, "I will not die now." He never afterwards made an attempt, or expressed a wish to destroy himself.

Dr. Conolly mentions an interesting case which occurred in the Glasgow Lunatic Asylum. A patient affected with religious melancholy, had made up his mind to destroy himself. A short passage of Scripture impressively and kindly spoken to him, not only prevented the commission of suicide at the time, but had the effect of permanently checking the tendency to it. The same dreadful thoughts frequently returned to the

with extreme care wraps them up, and guards them in wooden boxes when going out to ride. A prince of Bourbon often supposed himself to be a plant, aud taking his stand in the garden, would insist upon being watered in common with the plants around him. A French gentleman imagined himself to be dead, and refused to eat. To prevent his dying of starvation, two persons were introduced to him in the character of illustrious dead like himself, and they invited him after some conversation respecting the world of shades, to dine with another distinguished but deceased person, Marshall Turenne. The lunatic accepted this polite invitation, and made a very hearty dinner. Every day while this fancy prevailed, it was necessary to invite him to the table of some Ghost of rank and reputation. Yet in the other common affairs of life the gentleman was not incapacitated from attending to his own interests."

patient's mind, but the recollection that no murderer "has eternal life," returned also, and the crime was refrained from!

A wealthy man became insane, from the groundless impression, that he was ruined in his pecuniary affairs. By studying a list of debtor and creditor, which was made out for him, and in which his affairs were shown to be in a very flourishing condition, he lost his insane belief and entirely recovered. In many cases such an experiment would be totally in vain. The lunatic would retain his delusion notwithstanding the evidence of the list. But where the mind is just bordering upon insanity, or where it has not become fixed in its morbid impressions, such experiments not unfrequently dispel the cloud, and restore the light of reason.

It is stated of an eminent logician, that in a season of insanity, he was impressed with the belief that God had commanded him to starve to death. The physician to whose care he was intrusted, acquainted with the characteristic strength of his reasoning powers, adopted the following course to convince him of his delusion.

"You will admit," said he, "that God would not command you to do any thing which it is impossible for you to do, will you not ?"

"Certainly," the patient replied.

The physician then proceeded to show him that they could place him in a chair prepared for the purpose, with straps and buckles to confine every limb. He then showed him instruments with which he could either force the teeth open, or drill them out. Having thus provided an unobstructed channel to the stomach, he showed him the stomach pump, with which he could speedily force down any needful quantity of food. By thus distincty tracing out the various stages of the operation, and showing the man, that it was utterly out of his power to resist, he convinced him that his efforts at starvation must be futile, and consequently that God never could have given him such a command.

An affecting instance of the power of a timely appeal to reason occurs in the life of Cowper whose great genius, it is well known, was often overshadowed with religious despondency. In the account he gives of a conversation he had with his brother, who visited him at Dr. Cotton's, he says" as soon as we were left alone, my brother asked me how I found myself. I answered, as much better as despair can make me.' We went together into the garden. Here, on my expressing a settled assurance of sudden judgment, he protested to me that it was all a delusion, and protested so strongly, that I could not help giving some attention to him. I burst into tears and cried

out, 'If it be a delusion, then I am one of the happiest of beings!" Something like a ray of hope was shot into my heart, but still I was afraid to indulge it." The dawn of hope, which this conversation introduced, increased, till the gloom of despondency was in a great measure dispelled.

Suppose Cowper in that morbid state of excitement and sensitiveness to which he was so subject, had been withdrawn from the cheerful scenes of the parlor, and from the kindly expressions of sympathy and affection, and had been handed over to rude treatment and stern command, and violent restraint, how long would his trembling mind have endured the shock? Reason would undoubtedly have been entirely dethroned; the light of intellect would have been totally extinguished, and he would have died a raving maniac, in the cells of a mad-house. No common degree of delicacy and discrimination is requisite, to lead a refined and well cultivated mind, "from the chaos and darkness of insanity to the order and the light of intelligence." The highly excited and susceptible mind must be soothed by mildness and tenderness. The first indications of convalesence should be watched with solicitude, and cherished with unwearied kindness and care. It is a difficult and a delicate task, "to superintend with ease and without offending, to control without severity, and to indulge without weakness; to attract without fatiguing the attention, to revive the memory without reviving memorials of afflictions; to touch the imagination, but not too sensibly, and to encourage at favorable moments to such comparisons as may triumph over retreating delusions."

The situation of the insane, is, in this country in many cases, deplorable in the extreme. With the exception of Massachusetts, no state has made effectual legislative provision for its insane poor, and the few institutions which private benevolence has provided, are necessarily very limited in the relief which they afford. Massachusetts is the only state, which has erected an asylum for these unfortunate beings. In most of the States, the lunatics are either wandering at large, the subjects of insult and derision, from the young and the degraded, or confined in poor-houses and prisons. The seventh Report of the London Prison Discipline Society contains the following just reflections upon this subject.

"There is not upon earth a more affecting spectacle than an imprisoned lunatic. In viewing the ordinary inmates of a goal, our sense of pity is in some degree counteracted by a feeling of justice; but in the criminal lunatic we behold an object of unmixed compassion-an irresponsible agent suffering under pun

ishment-a sufferer from disease the most terrible, without the means which can alone contribute to his cure. Under circumstances the most favorable to recovery,-when mitigated by all that skill can dictate or kindness can suggest-how awful are the maladies of mind! Other evils admit of relief from the promises of religion, the approbation of conscience, and the consolations of friendship; but the lunatic is estranged from every comfort, by which man is sustained in the hour of affliction; and if, as in the treatment of the criminal and pauper insane, the miseries of disease, be aggravated by indigence and neglect, then is the measure of human calamity indeed full.

"In a prison, the lunatic receives no medical aid adapted to his condition. He is usually confined with, and for the most part treated as, other prisoners; and he is too frequently the object of violence and sport to the brutal and depraved. These circumstances inevitably strengthen the excitement of his feelings, and the alienation of his mind; and it is very rare that imprisonment fails to prolong his disorder and perpetuate his sufferings during life. Obvious as is the cruelty of such treatment, it becomes still more apparent by the fact, that an early attention to mental disease, affords the most certain, and in many cases, the only means of cure. The experience of the best regulated asylums abundantly proves that, under proper care, in the first stages of the disorder, a very large majority of lunatics are restored to society; and it is equally certain that when the disease has been at first neglected or improperly treated, a very large proportion become incurable. As a proof of this fact it may not be uninteresting to state, that of fortyseven patients admitted into the retreat at York, within three months from the commencement of the first attack, forty were restored to their friends, recovered; and of the remaining seven, three died so soon after admission, and of complaints under which they labored at the time they entered, as hardly to allow of the opportunity of recovery. Of the cases of persons in this establishment, who, before their admission had been afflicted for a period exceeding three months, and within twelve months, the proportion of cures appears to be as twenty-five to forty-five; and of those where the disease was of more than two years standing, the proportion is as fourteen to seventy-nine."

The researches of the American Prison Discipline Society have brought to light scenes of suffering, which it was little. imagined could be found in this enlightened land. Many of the insane were found imprisoned with the vilest of the vile, ' and exposed without the power of redress to the ridicule and the abuse of those who have forgotten mercy. Others were

found in cold and nakedness upon the damp floor of our darkest dungeons, with hardly a solitary comfort to beguile their hours of woe. The imagination can with difficulty conceive the amount of suffering, to which these unfortunate yet innocent creatures were exposed. A young clergyman who became deranged, was found in Bridewell in the common receptacle of the off-scouring of the earth. How acute must be the suffering which a refined and sensitive mind must endure, in being cast into such an haunt of degradation, impiety and crime. In Massachusetts, thirty lunatics were found in Prison. One was found in a cheerless cell, without clothing, without a bed, and without even a bench upon which to rest his weary limbs. In his delirium he had twisted a wreath of rags around his neck, and another around his waist. A heap of filthy straw in one corner of the room, marked the place where he was accustomed to throw down his naked and long neglected person for rest. In this situation friendless, companionless, comfortless, he had worn away nine weary years.

"Oh who can tell what days, what nights he spent,
Of tideless, sailless, waveless, shoreless wo."

In one Prison five lunatics were found in separate dungeons, gloomy and damp. When the door was opened, it was so dark that with difficulty could the wretched inmate be distinguished. When the visitors entered, the fetid odor was so strong as to drive them back almost vomiting. How is it possible that in such a scene of gloom and filth, the shattered intellect should be cherished and restored.

"In one prison in which were ten lunatics, two were found about seventy years of age, a male and a female in the same apartment of an upper story. The female was lying on a heap of straw, under a broken window. The snow in a severe storm was beating through the window, and lay upon the straw around her withered body which was partially covered with a few filthy and tattered garments. The man was lying in a corner of the room in a similar situation, except that he was less exposed to the storm. The former had been in this apartment six, and the latter twenty-one years."

One poor lunatic was found in an apartment which he had occupied eight years, leaving it but twice during that period. For eighteen months the door of his room had not been opened. His food was handed him through a small orifice. No fire warmed this dreary apartment and cold and suffering had so disfigured his appearance that you could hardly deem him human.