I have been asked by the President to open a discussion on the “Treatment of Mental Excitement in Asylums.” The subject is a very important and practical one, and goes to the root of many of the most difficult problems connected with the management of the insane. Of cases of mental excitement in asylums it may be said, “they are always with us,” and the manner in which they are treated and the success attending their treatment may be taken as tests of the good management of an asylum. The difference between the state of the madhouses of the past and of the mental hospitals of the present day is largely the result of better methods of dealing with it.