LUNATIC ASYLUMS.

“The rat has formidable weapons in the shape of four small, long, and very sharp teeth, two of which are in the upper and two in the lower jaw. These are formed in the shape of a wedge, and by the following wonderful provision of nature have always a fine, sharp, cutting edge. On examining them carefully, we find that the inner part is of a soft, ivory-like composition, which may be easily worn away, whereas the outside is composed of a glass-like enamel, which is excessively hard. The upper teeth work exactly into the under, so that the centres of the opposed teeth meet exactly in the act of gnawing; the soft part is thus being perpetually worn away, while the hard part keeps a sharp, chisel-like edge; at the same time the teeth grow up from the bottom, so that as they wear away a fresh supply is ready. The consequence of this arrangement is, that, if one of the teeth be removed, either by accident or on purpose, the opposed tooth will continue to grow upwards, and, as there is nothing to grind them away, will project from the mouth and turn upon itself; or, if it be an under-tooth, it will evenrun into the skull above. There is a preparation in the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons which well illustrates this fact. It is an incisor tooth of a rat, which, from the cause above mentioned, has increased its growth upwards to such a degree, that it has formed a complete circle and a segment of another; the diameter of it is about large enough to admit a good-sized thumb. It is accompanied by the following memorandum, addressed by a Spanish priest to Sir J. Banks, who presented it to the Museum: ‘I send you an extraordinary tooth of a rat. Believe me, it was found in the Nazareth garden (to which order I belong). I was present when the animal was killed, and took the tooth; I know not its virtues, nor have the natives discovered them.’”

We once saw a newly-killed rat to whom this misfortune had occurred. The tooth, which was an upper one, had in this case also formed a complete circle, and the point in winding round had passed through the lip of the animal. Thus the ceaseless working of the rat’s incisors against some hard substance is necessary to keep them down, and if he did not gnaw for his subsistence, he would be compelled to gnaw to prevent his jaw being gradually locked by their rapid development.

The destructive nature of the rat, the extraordinary manner in which he multiplies, and his perpetual presence—for where there is a chink that he can fill, and food for him to eat, there he will be, notwithstanding that a long line of ancestors have one after another been destroyed on the spot[11]—necessitates some counteracting influence to keep him within due bounds. This is done by making him the prey of hunting-animals and reptiles, beginning with man, and running down the chain of organized life to the gliding snake. The poor rat, although he doubtless does service as a scavenger, and must have his use in fulfilling some essential purpose of creation, finds favour nowhere: every man’s hand, nearly every feline paw, and many birds’ beaks are against him. The world thinks of him, as of the pauper boy in “Oliver Twist,”—“Hit him hard; he ain’t a’got no friends.” Dwelling in the midst of alarms, he might be supposed to pass an uneasy and nervous existence. But it is nothing of the kind. The same Providence which hasfurnished him with the teeth suitable to the work they have to perform, has endowed him with the feelings proper to his lot; and no animal, if he be watched from a distance, appears more happy and complacent. In danger he preserves a wonderful presence of mind, and acts upon the principle that while there is life there is hope. His cunning on such occasions is often remarkable, and evinces a reasoning power of no contemptible order:—

“A traveller in Ceylon,” says Mrs. Lee, in her entertaining “Anecdotes of Animals,” “saw his dogs set upon a rat, and, making them relinquish it, he took it up by the tail, the dogs leaping after it the whole time. He carried it into his dining-room, to examine it by the light of the lamp, during the whole of which period it remained as if it were dead,—limbs hanging, and not a muscle moving. After five minutes he threw it among the dogs, who were still in a state of great excitement, and, to the astonishment of all present, it suddenly jumped upon its legs, and ran away so fast that it baffled all its pursuers.”

The sagacity of the rat in eluding danger is not less than his craftiness in dealing with it when it comes. A gentleman, Mr. Jesse relates, who fed his own pointers, observed through a hole in the door a number of rats eating from the trough with his dogs, who did not attempt to molest them. Resolving to shoot the intruders, he next day put the food, but kept out the dogs. Not a rat came to taste. He saw them peering from their holes, but they were too well versed in human nature to venture forth without the protection of their canine guard. After half an hour the pointers were let in, when the rats forthwith joined their hosts, and dined with them as usual. If it comes to the worst, and the rat is driven to bay, he will fight with admirable resolution. A good-sized sewer-rat has been known to daunt for a moment the most courageous bull-terrier, advancing towards him with tail erect, and inflicting wounds of the most desperate nature. The bite of any rat is severe, and that of a sewer-rat so highly dangerous, that valuable dogs are rarely allowed by their masters to fight them. The garbage on which they live poisons their teeth, and renders the wounds they make deadly. Even with his great natural enemy and superior, the ferret, he will sometimes get the advantage by his steady bravery and the superiority of his tactics. Mr. Jessedescribes an encounter of the kind, the circumstances of which were related to him by a medical gentleman at Kingston:—

“Being greatly surprised that the ferret, an animal of such slow locomotive powers, should be so destructive to the rat tribe, he determined to bring both these animals fairly into the arena, in order to judge of their respective powers; and having selected a fine large and full-grown male rat and also an equally strong buck ferret, which had been accustomed to hunt rats, my friend, accompanied by his son, turned these two animals loose in a room without furniture, in which there was but one window. Immediately upon being liberated, the rat ran round the room as if searching for an exit. Not finding any means of escape, he uttered a piercing shriek, and with the most prompt decision took up his station directly under the light, thus gaining over his adversary (to use the language of other duellists)the advantage of the sun. The ferret now erected his head, sniffed about, and began fearlessly to push his way towards the spot where the scent of his game was strongest, facing the light in full front, and preparing himself with avidity to seize upon his prey. No sooner, however, had he approached within two feet of his watchful foe, than the rat, again uttering a loud cry, rushed at him with violence, and inflicted a severe wound on the head and neck, which was soon shown by the blood which flowed from it; the ferret seemed astonished at the attack, and retreated with evident discomfiture; while the rat, instead of following up the advantage he had gained, instantly withdrew to his former station under the window. The ferret soon recovered the shock he had sustained, and, erecting his head, once more took the field. This second rencontre was in all its progress and results an exact repetition of the former—with this exception, that, on the rush of the rat to the conflict, the ferret appeared more collected, and evidently showed an inclination to get a firm hold of his enemy; the strength of the rat, however, was very great, and he again succeeded not only in avoiding the deadly embrace of the ferret, but also in inflicting another severe wound on his neck and head. The rat a second time returned to his retreat under the window, and the ferret seemed less anxious to renew the conflict. These attacks were resumed at intervals for nearly two hours, all ending in the failure of the ferret, who was evidently fighting to a disadvantage from the light falling full on his eye whenever he approached the rat, who wisely kept his ground and never for a moment lost sight of the advantage he had gained. In order to prove whether the choice of this position depended upon accident, my friend managed to dislodge the rat, and took his own station under the window; but the moment the ferret attempted to make his approach, the rat, evidently aware of the advantage he had lost, endeavoured to creep between my friend’s legs, thus losing his natural fear of man under the danger which awaited him from his more deadly foe.”

Driven from his defensive position, the rat continued his attacks, but with an evident loss of courage, and the ferret ultimately came to the death-grapple with his crafty antagonist. A similar battle was witnessed by a friend, with the difference that the rat, being undisturbed in his advantageous position with regard to the light, finally beat off the ferret, which wasabsolutely bitten into shreds over the head and muzzle. The repetition of the same conduct by a second animal shows that this particular species of cunning is a general faculty of the tribe. The main superiority of the ferret is in his retaining his hold when once he has fastened on his prey, sucking his life’s blood the while; whereas the rat fights by a succession of single bites, which wound but do not destroy. The snake prevails by his venom. Mrs. Lee relates the particulars of a combat in Africa, in which rat and snake repeatedly closed and bit at one another, separating after each assault, and gathering up strength for a fresh attack. At length the rat fell, foamed at the mouth, swelled to a great size, and died in a few minutes.[12]

If he can be savage when self-protection requires, he also has his softer moments, in which he shows confidence in man almost as strong as that exhibited by the dog or cat. An old blind rat, on whose head the snows of many winters had gathered, was in the habit of sitting beside our own kitchen fire, with all the comfortable look of his enemy, the cat; and such a favourite had he become with the servants, that he was never allowed to be disturbed. He unhappily fell a victim to the sudden spring of a strange cat. A close observation of these animals entirely conquers the antipathy which is entertained towards them. Their sharp and handsome heads, their bright eyes, their intelligent look, their sleek skins, are the very reverse of repulsive; and there is positive attraction in the beautiful manner in which they sit licking their paws and washing their faces—an occupation in which they pass a considerable portion of their time. The writer on rats inBentley’s Miscellanyrelates an anecdote of a tame rat, which shows that he is capable of serving his master as well as of passing a passiveexistence under his protection. The animal belonged to the driver of a London omnibus, who caught him as he was removing some hay. He was spared because he had the good luck to be piebald, became remarkably tame, and grew attached to the children. At night he exhibited a sense of the enjoyment of security and warmth, by stretching himself out at full length on the rug before the fire; and on cold nights, after the fire was extinguished, he would creep into his master’s bed. In the daytime, however, his owner utilized him. At the word of command, “Come along, Ikey,” he would jump into the ample great-coat pocket, from which he was transferred to the boot of the omnibus. Here his business was to guard the driver’s dinner; and if any person attempted to make free with it, the rat would fly at them from out the straw. There was one dish alone of which he was an inefficient protector. He could never resist plum-pudding; and though he kept off all other intruders, he ate his fill of it himself. These are by no means extraordinary instances of the amiable side of rat nature when kindly treated by man, and we could fill pages with similar relations. But it seems, in addition to his other merits, that he possesses dramatic genius. We have heard of military fleas, we have seen Jacko perform his miserable imitation of humanity on the top of a barrel-organ; but who ever heard of a rat’s turn for tragedy? Nevertheless, a Belgian newspaper not long since published an account of a theatrical performance by a troop of rats, which gives us a higher idea of their intellectual nature than anything else which is recorded of them. This novel company of players were dressed in the garb of men and women, walked on their hind legs, and mimicked with ludicrous exactness many of the ordinary stage effects. On one point only were they intractable. Like the young lady in the fable, who turned to a cat the moment a mouse appeared, they forgot their parts, their audience, and their manager, at the sight of the viands which were introduced in the course of the piece; and, dropping on all-fours, fell to with the native voracity of their race. The performance was concluded by their hanging in triumph their enemy the cat, and dancing round her body.

The rat, as we have said, has many enemies: the weazel, the pole-cat, the otter, the dog, the cat, and the snake hunt him remorselessly all over the world. Man, however, is his most relentless and destructive enemy. In some places he is killed for food, as in China, where dried split rats are sold as a dainty. Thechiffonniersof Paris feed on them without reluctance. Nor is rat-pie altogether obsolete in our own country. The gipsies continue to eat such as are caught in stacks and barns, and a distinguished surgeon of our time frequently had them served up at his table. They feed chiefly upon grain; and it is merely the repulsive idea which attaches to this animal under every form that causes it to be rejected by the same man who esteems the lobster, the crab, and the shrimp a delicacy, although he knows that they are the scavengers of the sea. They were not always so nice in the navy. An old captain in her Majesty’s service informs us that on one occasion, when returning from India, the vessel was infested with rats, which made great ravages among the biscuit. Jack, to compensate for his lost provisions, had all the spoilers he could kill, put into pies, and considered them an extraordinary delicacy. At the siege of Malta, when the French were hard pressed, rats fetched a dollar apiece; but the famished garrison marked their sense of the excellence of those which were delicately fed by offering a double price for every one caught in a granary. Man directs his hostility against the rat, however, chiefly because he considers him a nuisance; and the gin and poison, cold iron and the bowl, a dismal alternative, are accordingly presented to him. With the former he is not so easily caught, and will never enter a trap or touch a gin in which any of his kind have fretted and rubbed. Poison is a more effectual method, but it is not always safe. Rats which have been beguiled into partaking of arsenic instantly make for the water to quench their intolerable thirst, and, though they usually withdraw from the house, they may resort in their agony to an in-door cistern, and remain there to pollute it.[13]The writer who calls himself“Uncle James,” and who, for a reason that will shortly appear, is exceedingly anxious to impress the public with the belief that the best mode of getting rid of the rat is to hunt him with terriers, states that a dairy-farmer in Limerick poisoned his calves and pigs by giving them the skim milk at which rats had drunk when under the pangs produced by arsenic. One mode of clearing them out of a house is either to singe the hair of a devoted rat, or else to dip his hind-quarters into tar, and then turn him loose, when the whole community will take their leave for a while. But this is only a temporary expedient, and in the interim the offenders are left to multiply, and perchance transfer their ravages to another part of the domain where they are equally mischievous. The same objection applies to the remedy of pounding the common dog’s-tongue, when gathered in full sap, and laying it in their haunts. They retire only to return. The Germans turn the rat himself into a police-officer to warn off his burglarious brethren. Dr. Shaw, in his General Zoology, states that a gentleman who travelled through Mecklenburg about thirty years ago saw one at a post-house with a bell about its neck, which the landlord assured him had frightened away the whole of the “whiskered vermin” which previously infested the place. Mr. Neele says that at Bangkok, the Siamese capital, the people are in the habit of keeping tame rats, which walk about the room, and crawl up the legs of the inmates, who pet them as they would a dog. They are caught young, and, attaining a monstrous size by good feeding, take the place of our cats, and entirely free the house of their own kind. But the most effectual and in the end the cheapest remedy is an expert rat-catcher. Cunning as an experienced old rat becomes, he is invariably checkmated when man fairly tries a game of skill with him. The well-trained professor of the art, who by long habit has grown familiar with his adversary’s haunts and tactics, his hopes andfears, his partialities and antipathies, will clear out a house or a farmyard, where a novice would merely catch a few unwary adventurers and put the rest upon their guard. The majority of the world have, happily for themselves, a better office, and the regular practitioner might justly address the amateur in much the same words that the musician employed to Frederick the Great, when the royal flute-player was expecting to be complimented on his performance: “It would be a discredit to your Majesty to play as well as I.”

“Uncle James,” however, is of a different opinion. This author considers that every man should be his own rat-catcher, which he evidently believes to be the most improving, dignified, and fascinating calling under the sun, as he considers rats themselves to be the crying evil of the day, second only in his estimation to the grand injustice of the old corn-law. Indeed, we cannot see from his own premises how the evil can be second to any great destructive principle, earthquakes included. He takes a single pair of rats, and proves satisfactorily that in three years, if undisturbed, they will have thirteen litters of eight each at a birth, and that the young will begin littering again when six months old; by this calculation he increases the original pair at the end of three years to six hundred and fifty-six thousand eight hundred and eight. Calculating that ten rats eat as much in one day as a man, which we think is rather under than over the fact, the consumption of these rats would be equal “to that of sixty-four thousand six hundred and eight men the year round, and leave eight rats in the year to spare.” Now, if a couple of rats could occasion such devastation in three years after the original pair marched out of the ark, how comes it that the descendants of the myriads which ages ago co-existed among us have not eaten up the earth and the fullness thereof? Uncle James conveniently forgets that animals do not multiply according to arithmetical progression, but simply in proportion to the food provided for them. He must not, however, be expected to be wiser than Malthus on the subject of animal reproduction, and he has the additional incentive to error, that he evidently paints up his horrors for an artful purpose. Therecan be no sort of doubt that he has several well-bred terriers to dispose of, and hence the following panacea for all the evils which afflict society.

“A dog, to be of sound service, ought to be of six to thirteen pounds weight; over that they become too unwieldy. I would also recommend, above all others, the London rat-killing terrier: he is as hard as steel, courageous as a lion, and as handsome as a racehorse!—[Uncle James is a Londoner, of course.] Let the farmers in each parish meet and pass resolutions calling upon their representatives in parliament to take the tax off rat-killing dogs. Let them devise plans for procuring some well-bred terriers and ferrets, and spread the young ones about among their men. Let there be a reward offered of so much per head for dead rats, and let there be one person in each parish appointed to pay for the same. Rats are valuable for manure; let there be a pit in each locality, and let this man stick up an announcement every week, in some conspicuous place, as to the number of rats killed, and by whom. Then, what will be the result? Why, a spirit of emulation will rise up among the villagers, and they will be ransacking every hole and corner for rats.Thus will a tone of cheerful enterprise, activity, and pleasantry come in among them, ‘with a fund of conversation;’ and instead of that crawling, dogged monotony which characterizes their general gait and manner, they will meet their employers and go to their labour with joyous steps and smiling countenances.”

The coming man, so long expected, is it seems the rat-catcher. Here is manure multiplied, agriculture improved, food husbanded, a smiling, enlightened, and conversible peasantry—and all the result of rat-catching. But a difficulty has been overlooked. When the entire population is converted into rat-catchers, rats must shortly, like the dodo, be extinct. For a while we shall become an exporting country, but this resource must fail us at last, and England’s glory will expire with its rats. Then once more we shall have a sullen, silent, discontented peasantry; “their fund of conversation” will be exhausted, or at best the villagers will be reduced to talk with a sigh of the golden age, never to be renewed, when the country enjoyed the unspeakable blessing of rat-catching. In short, we fear that Uncle James has been so exclusively devoted to the science of rat-catching, that he has neglected to cultivate the inferior art of reasoning; but, interested as we suspect it to be, we join in his commendation of the virtues of the terrier. The expedition with which a clever dog will put his victims out of their misery is such that a terrier not four pounds in weight has killed fourhundred rats within two hours. By this we may estimate the destruction dealt to the race by that nimble animal, “hard as steel, courageous as a lion, and handsome as a race-horse.” A custom has sprung up within the last twenty years of watching these dogs worry rats in a pit, and there are private arenas of the kind where our fair countrywomen, leaning over the cushioned circle, will witness with admiration the cleverness of their husbands’ or brothers’ terriers. “Uncle James” might commend their taste, and think the sport calculated to furnish them with “a fund of conversation, and a spirit of cheerful enterprise and pleasantry;” but except the fact had proved it to be otherwise, we should have supposed that there was not an educated man in Great Britain who would not have been shocked at this novel propensity of English ladies.

Horace Walpole, whose pen has graven so deeply the social characteristics of his age, in describing to his friend Mann the terrors excited by the Lord George Gordon mob, says “they threaten to let the lions out of the Tower, and the madmen out of Bedlam.” In this short sentence we have a clear view of the opinion which our forefathers entertained of lunatics—an opinion which the pictures of Hogarth’s Madhouse Cells have impressed on the popular mind even to this day. And in truth it is not fifty years since the state of things which now exists only in the imagination of the ignorant, was both general and approved. The interior of Bethlehem at that date could furnish pictures more terrible than Hogarth ever conceived. It is not our purpose, however, to dwell upon these horrors of former days. Through the instrumentality of the late Samuel Tuke, of York, Gardner Hill, Charlesworth, Winslow, and Conolly, of London, the old method of treatment, with its whips, chains, and manacles, has passed away for ever; and as a true emblem of the revolution which has taken place, we may mention that some years since a governor, in passing through the laundry of Bethlehem, perceived a wrist-manacle, which had been converted by one of the women into a stand for a flat iron!

In spite of the ameliorations in the condition of the insane, many among the higher, and nearly all among the lower classes, still look upon the County Asylum as the Bluebeard’s cupboard of the neighbourhood. These unfounded ideas act as a powerful drawback to the successful treatment of insanity, for as the vast majority of cures are effected within three months of the original attack, whatever deters the friends of the patient frombringing him under regimen at the earliest possible moment, probably ensures the perpetuation of the disease. We can well imagine the undefined awe and tribulation of spirit with which the unhappy creatures who are stricken in mind enter the gates of an abode in which they are supposed to be given over to a durance worse than death; but so mistaken is the impression, that the feelings of desperation are almost immediately succeeded by the inspiriting dawnings of hope. The furious maniac who arrives at Colney Hatch or Hanwell in a cart, or a hand-barrow, bound with ropes like a frantic animal, the terror of his friends and himself, is no sooner within the building which imagination invests with such terrors, than half his miseries cease. The ropes cut, he stands up once more free from restraint, kind words are spoken to him, he is soothed by a bath, and, if still violent, the padded room, which offers no aggravating mechanical or personal resistance, calms his fury, and sleep, which has so long been a stranger to him, visits him the first night which he spends in the dreaded asylum. An old lady—a relapsed patient—whose silver locks hung dishevelled on her shoulders, was, when we visited Hanwell, waiting in a cab in a state of the wildest excitement. Immediately she was admitted, and recognised the faces of the nurses who had formerly been kind to her, her whole countenance changed. “What, you Burke and you Thomson again!” she exclaimed, delighted at renewing former friendships; and settling herself down peaceably in the ward, she appeared as comfortable as at her own fireside.

Not only have the old methods of treatment been abandoned, but many changes have been made to render the houses for the insane less repulsive to the eye. Thousands of pounds have been spent in replacing the dungeon-like apertures (often without glass) with light-framed windows, undarkened by dismal bars; the gratings have been removed from the fireplaces; and that all the other associations may be in harmony with the improved appearance of the building, the harsh title of keeper has given place to that of attendant, and the madhouse has become the asylum. In the old plan, the entire treatmentseemed to consist in secluding the patient from every sight which renders life sweet, and in wrenching him violently from all the conditions which formerly surrounded him; the new idea is to bring within the walls as much of the outside world as possible. Here the artisan finds employment in various handicrafts, the agricultural labourer renews his commerce with the soil, and the female plies her needle or pursues her accustomed occupations in the laundry or the kitchen. Amusement takes its turn, and those who travel by the Great Western train on winter evenings are surprised to see the lights streaming from the great hall of Hanwell, and to hear perchance the sounds of music. These issue from the ball-room of the establishment! In place of the dark dungeon, the bonds and the blows which once added outward to inward woe, the inmates are realising the poetic picture of Gray,—

“With antic Sport and blue-eyed Pleasures,Frisking light in frolic measures;Now pursuing, now retreating,Now in circling troops they meet:To brisk notes in cadence beatingGlance their many-twinkling feet.”

Mental aberration is not of necessity the bane of mental enjoyment. There are many sweets by which its bitterness may be diluted and diminished, though our ancestors were so ignorant of the fact, as to believe that the best thing to be done for a mind o’erthrown was to pour vinegar to gall.

Dr. Conolly, in his lately-published volume on “The Treatment of the Insane without Mechanical Restraint,” looks upon the banishment of the strait-waistcoat with a just pride, for to him we owe the abolition of the last mechanical means of coercing temporary violence; but we cannot participate in his fear that the selfishness and ignorance of human nature will ever be able to restore the gloomy reign which has at last been brought to a close. We can no more go back to the days of hobbles and handcuffs, chains and stripes, than we can go back to the days of the rack and thumbscrew. We may have, it is true, lamentable exposures, such as took place at Bethlehem in 1851, but the depth of the public outcry, and the promptness with whichthe irregularities were remedied, is of itself an evidence that general opinion will prove the corrective of occasional abuses. Nor can we, from a fancied apprehension of the return to obsolete practices, join in the fanaticism which forbids the use of the strait-jacket as a means of coercion under all circumstances. There can be no doubt that the treatment which requires its frequent use is a bad one; but to deny that there are cases which call for its restraints would be to deny the evidence of our senses. Mr. Wilkes, the late medical officer to the Stafford County Lunatic Asylum, and now Commissioner in Lunacy, in answer to a series of questions issued by the Commissioners on Lunacy upon the subject, makes the following remarks:—

“With every disposition to advocate the disuse of restraint to the utmost extent, I am compelled to admit that the result of my experience in this asylum, up to the present time, leads me to the conclusion that cases may occur in which its temporary employment may be both necessary and justifiable. Besides the occasional use of some means of confining the hands when feeding patients by means of the stomach-pump, a more prolonged use of restraint was necessary in two cases which occurred some years since. One of these was a man of so determined a suicidal disposition, that on more than one occasion he nearly effected his purpose by trying to beat his head and face against the walls, to throw himself from tables and chairs, and thrust spoons and other articles down his throat. When first admitted, he was not suspected of having any suicidal tendency, and for some weeks did not show any; as a matter of precaution he slept in a padded room, and one night he so battered his head with a tin vessel that he was found nearly dead from loss of blood, and his life was subsequently in much danger from extensive sloughing of the scalp. In this case it was absolutely necessary to confine the hands to keep any dressings on the head, and after the wounds had healed, and the confinement of the hands had been discontinued, he wore a thickly-padded cap for many months. Several years after this, he bit both his little fingers off; and though the suicidal disposition has in a great measure subsided, he is still at times much excited, but does not require any restraint. The second case was one of acute mania. A powerful young man refused all food under the impression that it was poisoned, and imagined that every one who went near him intended to murder him. Every inducement to get him to take food was in vain, and though a sufficient body of attendants, under my own inspection, attempted to do what was necessary for him, he became so much bruised in holding him in his struggles to assail the attendants, when it was urgently requisite that food should be administered into the stomach, that I decided upon confining his hands, and both food and medicine were then readily administered. The result certainly justified the means employed, as the excitement subsided, and he soon recovered.”

So much for the experience of the medical attendant of apublic asylum; now let us hear the testimony of Dr. Forbes Winslow, whose experience in his private asylum, Sussex House, Hammersmith, has been as great perhaps as that of any man, since he has lived with his family for ten years in the very midst of his patients, and who is surpassed by no one in his enlightened and gentle treatment of the insane.

“Patients,” he says, in his Report to the Commissioners, “have often expressed a wish to be placed under mechanical restraint, should I, in my judgment, believe that they would, when much excited, commit overt acts of violence, and be dangerous to themselves and others. In cases like these, mechanical restraint may for a short period be applied, not only without detriment, but with positive advantage as a curative process. Several instances relative of this fact have come under my observation. I have seen cases where no food or medicine could be administered without subjecting the patient to restraint. In these cases, if all idea of cure had been abandoned, and I could have reconciled it to my conscience to allow the disease to take its uninterrupted course, and have permitted the patient to exist upon the minimum amount of nutriment, and take no medicine, all restraint might easily be dispensed with; but considering the cure of my patient paramount to every other consideration, I had no hesitation as to the humane and right mode of procedure.”

In a case which came under our knowledge, a patient imagined that the text, “If thine eye offend thee pluck it out,” was literally intended, and, after various attempts to comply with the command, he succeeded in destroying the sight of one orbit. Such instances are rare, but the medical man should at all times be prepared to meet them, instead of folding his arms and looking helplessly on whilst the mischief is being done, through a craven fear of the non-restraint cry. The strait-waistcoat is certainly liable to great abuse, but less than the padded room, which may be converted into a cruel means of coercion in the hands of unwatched attendants.

There yet remains a vast amount of restraint, which is almost as irritating, if not so strongly reprobated, as the implements which bind the limbs of the suicidal or violent. Restraint is only comparative. The strait-waistcoat is the narrowest zone of confinement, and the padded room but a little wider. Next to these comes the locked gallery for a class, then the encircling high wall for the entire lunatic community; and lastly, that aërial barrier the parole, for those who can be trusted to go beyond the asylum. The efforts of philanthropists will not,we are convinced, cease, until all the methods of confinement, down to the parole, are removed; or at least so disguised as to hinder their present irritating action upon the inmates. As long as the chief idea in connection with these establishments is that they are receptacles for thedetentionof the insane, so long perhaps the means taken to prevent flight will obtain; but when they are simply regarded as hospitals for the cure of mental disease, we shall witness the abandonment of many arrangements which are as barbarous and ineffectual as the cruelties practised in the last century. The asylums where the restraint is greatest are precisely those from which the largest number of patients contrive to escape; whereas, when restrictions of all kinds are abolished, as at the insane pauper colony of Gheel, in Belgium, but few persons ever attempt to get away.

In former days the public were admitted to perambulate Bedlam on the payment of twopence. A writer in theWorldgives a narrative of a visit to it in Easter-week, 1753, when he found there a hundred holiday-makers, who “were suffered unattended to run rioting up and down the wards, making sport of the miserable inhabitants.” Richardson, the novelist, had, a few years earlier, depicted the scene in the assumed character of a young lady from the country, describing to her friends the sights of London.

“I have this afternoon been with my cousins to gratify the odd curiosity most people have to see Bethlehem, or Bedlam Hospital. A more affecting scene my eyes never beheld. I had the shock of seeing the late polite and ingenious Mr. —— in one of these woful chambers. No sooner did I put my face to the grate, but he leaped from his bed, and called me with frightful fervency to come into his room. The surprise affected me pretty much, and my confusion being observed by a crowd of strangers, I heard it presently whispered that I was his sweetheart and the cause of his misfortune. My cousin assured me that such fancies were frequent upon these occasions; but this accident drew so many eyes upon me as obliged me soon to quit the place. I was much at a loss to account for the behaviour of the generality of people who were looking at these miserable objects. Instead of the concern I think unavoidable at such a sight, a sort of mirth appeared on their countenances, and the distempered fancies of the miserable patients provoked mirth and loud laughter in the unthinking auditors; and the many hideous roarings and wild motions of others seemed equally entertaining to them. Nay, so shamefully inhuman were some, among whom, I am sorry to say it, were several of my own sex, as to endeavour to provoke the patients into rage to make them sport.”

Supposed to be degraded to the level of beasts, as wild beasts they were treated. Like them they were shut up in dens littered with straw, exhibited for money, and made to growl and roar for the diversion of the spectators who had paid their fee. No wonder that Bedlam should have become a word of fear; no wonder that in popular estimation the bad odour of centuries should still cling to its walls, and that the stranger, tempted by curiosity to pass beneath the shadow of its dome, should enter with sickening trepidation. But now, instead of the howling madhouse his imagination may have painted it, he sees prim galleries filled with orderly persons. Scenes of cheerfulness and content meet the eye of the visitor as he is conducted along well-lit corridors, from which the bars and gratings of old have vanished. He stops, surprised and delighted, to look at the engravings of Landseer’s pictures on the walls, or to admire the busts upon the brackets; he beholds tranquil persons walking around him, or watches them feeding the birds which abound in the aviaries fitted up in the depths of the ample windows. Indeed the pet animals, such as rabbits, squirrels, &c., with the verdant ferneries, render the convalescent wards of this hospital more cheerful than any we have seen in similar institutions. At intervals the monotony of the long-drawn corridors is broken by ample-sized rooms carpeted and furnished like the better class of dwellings. If we pass along the female side of the hospital, we find the apartments occupied by a score of busy workers, the majority of whom appear to be gentlewomen. Every conceivable kind of needlework is dividing their attention with the young lady who reads aloud “David Copperfield,” or “Dred;” while beside the fire, perhaps, an old lady with silver locks gives a touch of domesticity to the scene, which we should little have expected to meet within these walls. In traversing the male side, instead of the workroom we find a library, in which the patients, reclining upon the sofas or lolling in arm-chairs round the fire, beguile the hours with books or theIllustrated News. Many a scholar, the silver chord of whose brain jingles for the moment out of tune, here finds a congenial atmosphere, and such materials forstudy as he often could not obtain out-of-doors; and here many an artist, clergyman, officer, and broken-down gentleman, meets with social converse, which the world does not dream could exist in Bedlam.[14]

No cases of more than twelve months’ standing are admitted within the walls of Bedlam, and only ninety persons termed incurables are allowed to remain beyond that period. These regulations exclude the idiotic and epileptic patients, who form such distressing groups in other establishments, and the interest required to obtain admission into this amply endowed charity ensures at the same time a much higher class of inmates. Clergymen, barristers, governesses, literary men, artists, and military and naval officers make up the staple of the assembly. The representatives of the lower orders are also present, but the educated element prevails, and the tone of dress and manners is vastly above that to be found in the pauper-swarming county asylums. There is a ball on the first Monday in every month, and the company that gathers in the crystal chamber at the extreme end of the south wing would not disgrace in behaviour and appearance any sane and well-bred community. The polka, the waltz, and the mazurka, performed with grace and ease, declare the social standing of the assembly; and many a pedestrian who sees the dark silhouettes of the dancers as they whirl across the light, is astonished at the festivities of the inmates. In the summer evenings the spacious courts are crowded with the patients, not gloomily walking between four dismal walls in which the very air seemed placed under restraint, but enjoying themselves in the bowling-green or in the skittle alley. The garden is at hand for those who love the culture of flowers. When we contrast the condition of the Bethlehem of fifty years ago with the Bethlehem of to-day, we see at a glance what agulf has been leaped in half a century—a gulf on one side of which we see man, like a demon, torturing his unfortunate fellows, on the other like a ministering angel carrying out the all-powerful law of love. Can this be the same Bethlehem where, in 1808, Mr. Westerton, Mr. Calvert, and Mr. Wakefield saw ten patients in the women’s gallery, each fastened by one arm or leg to the wall, with a length of chain that only allowed them to stand up by their bench, and dressed in a filthy blanket thrown poncho-like over their otherwise naked bodies? Can this be the same institution in which poor Norris, like a fierce hound in a kennel, was favoured with a long chain that passed through the wall into the next room, and which, while permitting him a little extra tether, enabled the keeper to haul him up to the side of the cell when it was necessary to approach him? But this indulgence did not last, and from the pages of Esquirol we learn the infernal torture which was finally put upon him.

“A stout iron ring was riveted round his neck, from which a short chain passed to a ring made to slide upwards or downwards on an upright massive iron bar, more than six feet high, inserted into the wall. Round his body a strong iron bar, about two inches wide, was riveted; on each side of the bar was a circular projection, which, being fastened to and enclosing each of his arms, pinioned them close to his side.”

In this position, in which he could only stand upright or lie upon his back, he lived for twelve years! But in nothing, perhaps, is the contrast between the past and the present more apparent than in the two pictures presented by Dr. Hood, the resident physician, from the case book of the Bethlehem Hospital, which at once show the difference of treatment and the different results which attended it.

Thus diversely does disordered nature answer to an appeal according to the spirit in which it is made. There is a reverse, however, to every medal, and the skeleton cupboards of Bethlehem are the male criminal lunatic wards. These dens, for we can call them by no softer name, are the only remaining representatives of old Bedlam. They consist of dismal, arched corridors, feebly lit at either end by a single window in double irons, and divided in the middle by gratings more like those which enclose the fiercer carnivora at the Zoological Gardens than anything we have elsewhere seen employed for the detention of afflicted humanity. Here fifty male lunatics are herded together without regard to their previous social or moralcondition. Thus the unfortunate clergyman, the Rev. Hugh Willoughby, who fired a pistol two years since at the judge at the Central Criminal Court, is herded with the plebeian perpetrator of some horrible murder. Side by side with the unfortunate Captain Johnson, of the ship “Tory,” who, in a fit of extraordinary excitement during a mutiny on board his vessel, cut down some of his crew, but is now perfectly sane, sits perhaps the ruffian who murdered the warder in cold blood at Coldbath Fields—a villain brought in mad by a tender-hearted jury who shrunk from the responsibility of hanging him. Here also poor Dad, the artist, who killed his father whilst labouring under a sudden paroxysm of insanity, is obliged to weave his fine fancies on the canvas amidst the most revolting conversation and the most brutal behaviour. Those who contend that all criminal lunatics should be treated alike, do not consider the vast difference between the tone of mind in an abandoned wretch who has lived a life of villany, and the gentleman who has committed a casual offence. As the former advances towards sanity the brutal disposition, which early training in vice and dissipation has engraved upon his nature, comes into strong relief, whilst the good breeding which is natural to the latter, and which was but temporarily eclipsed in him, resumes its sway. Nay, nothing is more certain than that the previous habits and manners of the lunatic are to a great extent unaffected by his unfortunate malady, even when it is at its height. The disgrace of thus caging up together the coarse and the gentle, the virtuous and the abandoned, rests wholly upon the shoulders of the Home Secretary. The governors of the hospitals, the medical officers, and the lunacy commissioners, have over and over again remonstrated against the enormity, and to our national shame have remonstrated in vain. It is proposed to build a special asylum for all the state lunatics who are now distributed among county asylums, hospitals, licensed houses, workhouses and jails, to the number of 591,[15]and it is a duty which we trust will not be longerdelayed. There can be little doubt that the presence of these crime-tainted individuals is felt deeply by the innocent lunatics, and that their recovery is retarded by the indignation excited at their degrading companionship with the outcasts of society. The erection of a criminal asylum upon a large scale would both compel a better system of classification, and would necessitate some solution of the difficult question—What shall be done with criminal patients who have recovered? One class of cases at least, as Dr. Tyler Smith has pointed out, leaves no room for doubt. The females who have committed offences whilst under the influence of the delirium attendant upon puerperal fever, and who, having recovered, are past the age of child-bearing, should at once be released. They are no longer liable to a recurrence of mental aberration, and to keep them incarcerated for life, is to treat past misfortune as an inexpiable crime. Nothing can be more cruel, unjust, and motiveless.

It is proposed to remove Bethlehem Hospital into the country, on the plea that ground cannot be obtained in sufficient quantity for the use of the inmates. If by this is meant that agricultural pursuits cannot be carried on in St. George’s Fields, we rejoice in the fact. A sane man, accustomed to the busy scene of a large town, would be wretched if he was condemned to pass the remainder of his days amid the silence of the fields, and the lunatic remains for the most part under the same domination of former habits. The notion that his faculties are universally disordered, all his perceptions destroyed, all his tastes obliterated, and all his sympathies extinct, is one of the grossest errors which can prevail. Nor do the better class of patients (such as form the inmates of Bethlehem) require the hard exercise which is necessary for the maintenance of health with an agricultural pauper. They find far more recreation in strolling through the streets in the neighbourhood of the asylum, under the care of an attendant, than in wading through ploughed fields, or in taking a turn at spade husbandry. To this we must add, that insanity is often a sudden seizure, that individuals go raving mad in thestreets; that, in short, there are frightful casualties of the mind, as of the body, which require the instant attention of the mental physician. For this reason alone every lunatic asylum should no more be removed into the country than every ordinary hospital. But, apart from this circumstance, we repeat that Bethlehem, within call of friends and within the hum of the busy world, glimpses of which can be caught by the patients from the loopholes of their retreat, and into which they are occasionally allowed to enter, is far better placed for purposes of cure than in any rural district, however well supplied with the means of pursuing agricultural labour. At present all the sights of the metropolis are from time to time enjoyed by the inmates. “The male patients last year,” says Dr. Hood, the resident physician, “who were not fit to be discharged, were allowed to spend a day at Kew; another day they went by steamboat to the Nore; and, conducting themselves well under the charge of careful attendants, visited many public exhibitions—the National Gallery, the Crystal Palace, Marlborough House, the Zoological Gardens, Smithfield Cattle-show, &c.” Who can doubt that people accustomed to such sights and sounds would infinitely prefer them to the delights of walking between hedge-rows, hoeing weeds, or digging potatoes? Who can doubt that these little excursions of the wall-bound inmates into the cheerful life of the outside world are a vast advantage to the slowly-recovering brain, and constitute just that desirable transitional training necessary to their safe restitution to unlimited freedom? In fact, under the old system, when convalescent patients, who had been confined for months in dungeon-like cells, bristling with bars, were taken to the gates and returned suddenly to unrestrained liberty, the effect of the contrast was often so great, that they set off running in a paroxysm of excitement, and were frequently brought back again in a few days, reduced by a too abrupt release to their old condition. It would not perhaps be undesirable to add to Bethlehem some small rural establishment, answering to thesuccursalesof foreign lunatic asylums; but this should be strictly an appendage, to which patients should be sent for a short time, for change of air and scene, justas all the world now and then take a trip to the country to refresh the wearied eye with the sight of green trees and fields, and to cure that moral scurvy contracted by perpetually dwelling upon the dismal vistas of blackened bricks which constitute metropolitan prospects.

For the fullest development of the prevalent system of treating the insane we must go to Colney Hatch and Hanwell, the two great lunatic asylums for the county of Middlesex. The former, situated on the Great Northern Railway, only six miles from the metropolis, is the largest and perhaps the most imposing-looking non-metropolitan building of the kind in Europe. In this establishment, built within the last six years, we may study the merits and demerits of modern asylums. Containing within its walls a population, inclusive of officers and attendants, of 1,380 persons, which is equal to that of our largest villages, and presenting the appearance of a town, its wards and passages amounting in the aggregate to the length of six miles, it is here that we shall find the completest system of organization, and, if we may use the term, of official routine. The enormous sum of money expended upon Colney Hatch, which has reached already to £270,000, prepares us for the almost palatial character of its elevation. Itsfaçade, of nearly a third of a mile, is broken at intervals by Italian campaniles and cupolas; and the whole aspect of the exterior leads the visitor to expect an interior of commensurate pretensions. He no sooner crosses the threshold, however, than the scene changes. As he passes along the corridor, which runs from end to end of the building, he is oppressed with the gloom; the little light admitted by the loop-holed windows is absorbed by the inky asphalte paving, and, coupled with the low vaulting of the ceiling, gives a stifling feeling and a sense of detention as in a prison. The staircases scarcely equal those of a workhouse; plaster there is none, and a coat of paint or whitewash does not even conceal the rugged surface of the brickwork. In the wards a similar state of things exists: airy and spacious they are, without doubt; but of human interest they possess nothing. Upwards of a quarter of a million has been squandered principally upon the exterior of this building;but not a sixpence can be spared to adorn the walls within with picture, bust, or even the commonest cottage decoration. This is the vice which pervades the majority of county asylums lately erected. The visiting justices doubtless believe that it would be a superfluous and even mischievous refinement to trouble themselves about pleasing the eye or amusing the brain of the lunatic; but this is a mighty error, as every person knows who understands how keenly sensitive are the minds of the majority of the insane.

“Stone walls do not a prison make,Nor iron bars a cage,”

sings the graceful Lovelace; but it should be remembered that the lunatic has no divine Althea to muse upon in his house of detention, and the majority of the insane have no healthy wings by which their minds can leap beyond the dreariness of the present. To divert them from the demon in possession, all the ingenuity of philanthropy should be employed; but this truth has been overlooked both here and at Hanwell; and we are lost in astonishment when we reflect upon the folly of lavishing hundreds of thousands upon outward ornamentation, whilst the decorations common among the poorest labourers are denied to the inmates for whom all this expense has been incurred. There is no more touching sight at Colney Hatch than to notice the manner in which the female lunatics have endeavoured to diversify the monotonous appearance of their cell-like sleeping-rooms with rag dolls, bits of shell, porcelain, or bright cloth placed symmetrically in the light of the window-sill. The love of ornament seems to dwell with them when all other mental power is lost; and they strew gay colours about them with no more sense, but with as much enjoyment, as the bower-bird of the Zoological Gardens adorns his playing-bower.[16]The prisondress of the male patients is in keeping with the desolate walls. It is infinitely depressing, even to the visitor, to see nothing but dull grey garments; and the lunatics themselves feel degraded by a uniform dedicated to the gaol-bird. The medical officers of both this asylum and Hanwell are deeply impressed with its injurious effects, and they have long denounced it. Happily the system is confined to the men, not, however, from any benevolent feeling towards the females, but simply because gown-pieces of the same pattern cannot be procured in sufficient quantities to clothe the entire community. Among the sane, self-respect is increased by the possession of decent clothes, and the lunatic is often still more amenable to their influence. A refractory patient at Colney Hatch was in the habit of tearing his clothes into shreds. Mr. Tyerman, one of the medical officers, ordered him to be dressed in a bran-new suit. The poor man, a tailor by trade, either from a professional appreciation of the value of his new habiliments, or from being touched by this mark of attention, respected their integrity, and from that moment rapidly recovered. Before leaving the asylum he stated that he owed his cure to the good effect produced upon his mind by being intrusted with this new suit of clothes. At Hanwell, the patients who destroy their dresses are put into strong canvas garments, bound round with leather and fastened with padlocks. This plan is adopted at some other lunatic asylums; but it always looks repulsive.

It is only, we believe, in the metropolitan county asylums, which should be model establishments, that the grey prison dress is retained. In the majority of county asylums the smock-frock of the district is used, and the patient moves about undistinguished from the rest of the population by any repulsive badge. In France and Belgium they manage better still. Dr. Webster, in his notes on foreign lunatic asylums, published in thePsychological Journal of Medicine, speaks of the bright head-dresses and vivid shawls used in France, as giving a cheerful appearanceto the assembled inmates. Nothing less could be expected from the known disposition of a people of whom it has been said, that if any man among them was thrown naked into the sea, he would rise up clothed from head to foot with a sword, bag-wig, and ruffles to boot. In the present matter they have been wiser in their generation than ourselves; and we can imagine with what surprise they would learn that at Hanwell, the most celebrated English establishment for the treatment of the insane, patients are rewarded for good conduct by allowing them to wear a fancy waistcoat. This fact of itself shows the aversion to the prison garb, and the necessity of discarding it. But the same visiting committee which inspects the county gaol governs the asylum, and we regret to say that they allow the organization of the former to be introduced into the latter.

In spite of these drawbacks, the progress made within the last twenty years has been immense. A walk through the wards and workshops of Colney Hatch will prove that the lunatic is at last treated as though he had human sympathy and desires, and was capable of behaving in many respects like a rational being. All large asylums possess an advantage over smaller ones in their greater ability to classify their inmates. The wards and corridors of Colney Hatch and Hanwell are so extensive that they may be likened to different streets inhabited by distinct classes. It is usual to name the compartments according to the mental condition of the patients contained in them. Thus in most asylums we have the refractory ward, the epileptic ward, the paralytic ward, the ward for dirty patients, and the convalescent ward. At Colney Hatch it is considered better to use numbers instead, as the patients soon become acquainted with the denomination of the class to which they belong, and often behave in conformity with it. Thus the lunatic, finding himself in a refractory ward, will sometimes act up to the part assigned to him, when he would otherwise be peaceable. The vice of classification is that it separates the population of an asylum into so many mental castes, which in some measure prevents that easy transition from lunacy to sanity, which it is desirable to maintain. In the choice of difficulties, however,there can be little doubt that these divisions in lunatic establishments, as at present constructed, present the most convenient as well as the best means of treating the insane, and the errors to which it is liable can at all times be obviated by the careful supervision of the medical officers.

Nothing strikes the visitor with greater admiration than the care taken of the paralytic and imbecile patients, who form so large a per-centage of the inmates of the county asylums. In most cases the sleeping apartments of these poor creatures at Colney Hatch and Hanwell are padded round breast-high, in order that they may not damage themselves against the walls whilst seized with convulsions in bed; and a pillow has been invented perfectly permeable to the air, on which they can lie with their faces downward during the paroxysm of a fit, without the risk of suffocation. In extreme cases even the floor is padded, lest the sufferer should unconsciously throw himself upon it. The bed-ridden paralytic reclines upon a water-bed, and is tended night and morning as sedulously as a helpless babe. The test of the care which prevails in an asylum is to be found in the condition of the persons who cannot help themselves. Where trouble begins, negligence begins also, in an ill-regulated establishment. Nowhere do the alleviations of humanity seem more required than with the idiots and paralytics. Of all the wards at Colney Hatch, these are the most depressing. It is impossible to contemplate a room full of creatures moving about on their seats with a monotonous action like a company of apes, or when paralyzed in their lower limbs, to see them dragging themselves like seals along the floor by the aid of their arms, without being oppressed by the sense of the dreadful condition to which man can be reduced when the mind is ruined and the nerve-power diseased. It is only in these wards and the refractory that on ordinary occasions the stranger would discover that he was among the mentally afflicted. It is reported that a lady, after she had been shown over a large asylum by the celebrated Esquirol, inquired, “But where are the mad people?” All the infinitely finely-shaded stages of lunacy which lie between mental health, wild fury, and chronic dementia are, in the popular idea,merged in the raving maniac. Yet it is rare for a casual visitor to witness scenes of violence in a lunatic asylum. Those who are mischievous are trained to concentrate their dislike upon the medical officers and attendants rather than upon their fellow-patients. The matron of Hanwell Asylum, in her report for 1856, thus speaks of one of the criminal lunatics who belongs to this refractory class:—

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