I propose to consider this subject exclusively in its relation to the insane of the better class. The pauper asylums throughout the country have long been admirably organized in this particular. Every such institution has attached to it a farm, gardens, a multiplicity of workshops, and the appliances for the pursuit of various trades—frequently those special to the locality, as weaving sheds in the West Biding Asylums. In one or another department, all the labourers and artisans, who comprise the majority of the inmates, can find congenial occupation. Manual labour, thus systematically provided for those able and willing to engage in it, is coincidently the source of immense benefit to the mental and physical health of the patients, and of considerable profit to the institution; the pauper lunatic, by one and the same effort, works out his own salvation and helps to pay for his care and treatment; the recovery rate is raised, the rate per head diminished. There is obviously danger of regarding the financial and not the remedial as the paramount consideration; but no instance of such an abuse of therapeutics has ever been brought forward. To the county patient hand-work is neither a novelty nor a hardship: even though his mental obliquity or confusion be such that he fails utterly to comprehend or appreciate the motives of those who urge him to employ himself; yet he is glad to exchange the monotony of ward, airing court, or aimless country walk, for the bustle and activity of farm or shop, with the prospect, may be, of working at his own craft or even acquiring a fresh one.

The value of an examination of the urinary constituents in the present investigation depends on (1) the promptness with which it is made, and whenever possible it should date from the first warning of mental attack; (2) on qualitative and quantitative analysis; (3) on microscopic examination; (4) on fluid and solid measures.

As the British Medical Association does not often visit Ireland, I think the present not an unsuitable time to lay before this Section a few facts which I think of special bearing on the management of Trish asylums, and largely affecting the interests of their inmates. My object, however, is as much to elicit the opinions of others as to impart information. When the Psychological Association met in Dublin in 1875 an interesting paper was read by Dr. Stewart on the “Obstacles to the Advancement in Ireland of Psychological Medicine,” and laid principal stress on the fact that 18 out of 22 Irish asylums had no assistant medical officer. Suffice it now to say that they have since been appointed to five other asylums, but that there are still 13 asylums without a second medical officer.

The question of the value of electricity in the treatment of insanity is one concerning which much difference of opinion appears to prevail, although there seems to be a more or less general idea that it is, or ought to be, of some service. We every now and then read of cases which have progressed to recovery under the application of this agent, but, as far as one can judge from published records, very little has hitherto been done in this country to study the question at all thoroughly or systematically.