The number of lunatics under care and treatment in the public asylums of England and Wales continue yearly to increase. On the 1st of January, 1849, there were 7629 patients in the public asylums. On the 1st of January, 1854, this number rose to 14,575; on the 1st of January, 1859, to 17,836; and on the 1st of January, 1864, to 23,880.

In the following stray notes and remarks, the writer details a trip to various places of medical and psychological interest which he made, in company with Professor Laycock, through some parts of France, Savoy, and Switzerland.

Your teacher has asked me to address you. I have complied with this request, chiefly from my respect to him, partly in order to realise the sort of sensational antithesis of lecturing to one of the largest classes ever assembled, in the same room where the first complete course of lectures on Mental Disease was delivered in this country, now nearly twenty years ago, to perhaps the smallest class ever addressed.

So extensive is the field of human knowledge, so many and wide apart are the spots at which ground has been broken, and so evident is the necessity for men to be special in their studies if they would be thoroughly masters of their subjects, that there is no little danger lest workers in one department may be unappreciated by, if not actually unknown to, those who are employed in another part. Any one who will give his attention to the matter may observe examples of lines of investigation, which have really close relations, and the results of which might be of mutual aid, running side by side, like parallel lines, without meeting. Accordingly, M. Comte was of opinion that there was needed a new order of scientific men, whose function it should be to bring together and co-ordinate the results of the different workers; and it is plain that such an organisation must be effected somehow. But great mischief would of a certainty result from men specially undertaking this work: unless they are thoroughly and practically grounded in some science, unless they have plodded in patient and tedious investigation, they are almost sure to go astray into vain and seductive speculations, which are never definite enough to be useful, are often enticing enough to be mischievous. If a valuable idea is perchance hit upon, it is potential rather than real, as a statue is potential in a block of marble, though it has yet to be hewn out; it is so shrouded in theoretical haze, and so much wanting in exactness, that it is of no value until the patient work of the practical men has defined it, put it in its proper place, and so to speak guaranteed its worth. Even Goethe, exceptionally powerful as his mind was, and much as he worked, owed his scientific troubles and his scientific errors to a want of practical knowledge. Those who have not had a scientific training must lack the scientific imagination.

An eye-witness of this remarkable phenomenon, the Ulster Revival of 1859, I should wish to dilate, yet a little, upon it, ere the period for doing so passes entirely away. The agitation which it engendered still lingers somewhat. And as like causes produce like effects, more revivals may perhaps be anticipated, when the seeds so profusely scattered shall experience with time the requisite development.

Considering the present state of Psychological Medicine, there are certainly few of us who may not be well satisfied. No one would have believed fifty years ago that in our day so many magnificent establishments should have been created throughout Europe. The legal position of these unfortunate persons has been secured; the abolition of the strait-jacket in English asylums has been accomplished;—results long before attempted by Pinel, Esquirol, Daguin, Tuke, Langerman, and by other reformers in mental science.

In a previous number (39) of this Journal are recorded the statistics of the first thousand cases of male patients admitted into the Somerset Lunatic Asylum, with an analysis of the causes of death. The same method is followed in the present communication with regard to the first thousand female admissions; a comparison is made between the sexes, and a general review from some authorities on these subjects.

The public has, doubtless, long ago become wearied of the tale of George Victor Townley, the murderer of Miss Goodwin, of Wigmore Grange, Derbyshire. As, however, important principles are involved in the curious history of his trial—his condemnation—his temporary release from prison—his transfer to a lunatic asylum—and his subsequent removal into penal servitude, an humble contribution to the facts of the case may not be out of place in the pages of ‘The Journal of Mental Science.’

Memory is an attractive theme, and one on which it is important that just views should prevail. It seems, however, that there is too much inexactness in the views which are commonly entertained about memory. It is generally supposed to be a repository, or something analogous to a tablet, which receives or retains impressions. Now, these notions, when the facts of the case are minutely investigated, fall short, in many respects, of the truth. This may be partly accounted for by the difficulty which, at first, invariably exists to find words to express mental operations, for men, at the outset, are forced to use, in an analogical sense, words already associated with physical phenomena, in order to designate those of mind. When, therefore, we speak of memory as a receptacle of impressions, after the manner of a tablet, we may perhaps mean no more than this, that there is some kind of analogy between memory and a tablet. Allowing that there is truth in what is here stated, it nevertheless seems that the words which are usually chosen to describe the phenomena of memory, are intended to convey the idea that knowledge exists in the mind in a latent condition, that it resides there even when it is not manifest in the form of consciousness or cognition, and to deny this will be deemed a grave error by some, and, indeed, present a paradoxical air to all. But let us examine the facts of the case.

In the ‘Journal of Mental Science’ for April, 1863, we published some general observations, condemnatory of the practice of sending insane patients from England to the Continental asylums.

My attention to the cottage system for the accommodation of chronic lunatics was revived soon after my appointment to the Gloucester County Asylum, by my finding that institution in a crowded condition; and although it possessed one cottage which answered well, there were no means of increased accommodation. The visiting magistrates of the asylum personally inspected the different workhouses belonging to the several unions in the county, and reported that they were not in a fit condition to receive harmless and chronic cases. Upon this, I addressed several questions to my brother superintendents, in order that I might have their opinions as to the best means to be provided for receiving the increased numbers that annually come to the portals of the county asylum for admission. I felt considerable diffidence in giving my opinion in favour of any innovation which had for its object the important plan of an altered system for the provision and treatment of any of the insane poor, or the so-called “chronic and harmless” lunatics. I have since then given the subject considerable thought and attention, the result of which has been to convince me that the cottage plan for asylums is the best means for the provision and treatment of the insane, as well as for relieving the present overcrowded condition of some of the county lunatic asylums. Previous to laying my plans and observations before the members of the association, I would take this the earliest opportunity that has arisen of acknowledging the kind and ready way in which so many of the members replied to the questions which I sent to them in reference to this subject.

It is now many years since I stumbled, by the merest accident, on this very important question:

“Hath nature's soul,
That formed this world so beautiful, that spread
Earth's lap with plenty, and life's smaller chord
Strung to unchanging unison, that gave
The happy birds their dwelling in the grove,
That yielded to the wanderers of the deep
The lovely silence of the unfathomed main,
And filled the meanest worm that crawls in dust
With spirit, thought, and love; on man alone
Partial in causeless malice, wantonly
Heaped, ruin, nee, and slavery; his soul
Blasted with withering curses: placed afar
The meteor happiness, that shuns his grasp?”

From the earliest period of his history down to the present day man has ever been an object of eager study to himself. Nevertheless it is questionable whether he has yet succeeded in satisfying himself what he really is. “Everything by turns, and nothing long,” seems to be the conclusion to which one may most safely come after consideration of the numerous definitions which man has at different times seriously given of himself. He has likened himself to most things on earth, and to not a few under the earth. He has, as it were, dissolved himself, tested, precipitated, dried, and weighed himself; he has frequently lost himself, gone in search of himself, traced himself back to an homunculus, and forward to his final disappearance in a general dissolution of his constituent particles. But after making all these and many other experiments upon himself, whether he is the godlike son of Heaven, or an idealised monkey, he has not yet decided.

I do not know that a more useful question can occupy this our last hour of meeting together than that of the legal responsibility of the insane, and how it affects us in our relations to our patients, more especially in regard to moral treatment. Our visits to Millholm have enabled us to judge of the value of that method, as carried out in the largest private asylum in Scotland. At the Crichton Institution, where we were so kindly entertained by Dr. Gilchrist and the directors, at our late visit, we witnessed its highest present development, and learn, moreover, of what it is further capable. Dr. Browne was the first to introduce the method into Scotland, when appointed to be the medical superintendent of the Crichton Institution, at a time when the lunatic was treated worse than a felon. With the sanction of the Board of Lunacy he most kindly consented to accompany us on our visit, and to give us a discourse on the moral treatment of the insane.

The hereditary transmission of disease, or of a tendency to it, has of late attracted more attention than it formerly did, and medical literature has been enriched by many able and learned disquisitions on the subject. Its importance seems to be generally appreciated, to a certain extent, but not to so great an extent, as a more perfect knowledge of its operation, and the vastness of its influence, would justify. From Burton's ’Anatomy of Melancholy’ may be quoted many passages by ancient writers, showing a lively appreciation of the fact of hereditary transmission, especially of disease. Fernelius says, “Such as the temperature of the father is, such is the son's, and, look, what disease the father had when he begot him, his son will have after him, and is as well the inheritor of his infirmities as of his lands.” “And where the complexion and constitution of the father is corrupt, then,” saith Roger Bacon, “the complexion and constitution of the son must needs be corrupt, and so the corruption is derived from the father to the son.” Burton also quotes passages from Hippocrates, Buxtorfius, Lemnius, Paracelsus, Crato, Bruno Seidelius, Daniel Sennertus, Forestus, Rodericus a Fonseca, Lodovicus Mercatus, and many others, referring to hereditary transmission, or the transmission of melancholy. The last mentioned wrote a book on the subject, ‘De Morbis Hereditariis,’ and therein first notices what is now called atavism. “It skips, in some families, the father and goes to the son, or takes every other, and sometimes every third, in a lineal descent, and doth not always produce the same, but some like, and a symbolising disease.” This last remark is of importance, as anticipating a fundamental principle in modern investigations into the subject. Burton himself highly estimates the importance and power of hereditary transmission, when he says, “These secondary causes, hence derived, are commonly so powerful that (as Wolphius holds) they do often alter the primary causes and decrees of the heavens.” This most learned and far-seeing author mentions facts, and hints at conclusions which are only now being understood and arrived at, and shows that an appreciation of the truth of hereditary transmission had formed the basis of laws forbidding the marriage between persons in any whit allied, and of those stern and implacable decrees, which, among certain Indian tribes, and even in Scotland, at an early period, necessitated the destruction of those that suffered from madness, gout, falling sickness, or any such dangerous diseases.

Dr. Ludwig Meyer, of Hamburg, has had the courage to defend the non-restraint system in Germany, and also himself to practise it in the Hamburg Asylum with the best success. It is true that Dr. Meyer had previously visited England, and examined with careful eyes, impartial goodwill, and practical mind, the non-restraint system. Why do not such physicians as Casimir Pinel of Paris, Renaudin of Mareville, Dick of Klingmünster, Neumann of Pöpelwitz, and Erlenmayer of Coblenz, visit England also, and with the same honest intentions as Meyer, study a system which has been practised here for more than twenty years amongst a population of insane amounting to 50,000 patients? It must be a messing to suffering humanity and a disgrace to those who have the boldness not only to assert that they do not comprehend these facts, but also to call the system an English swindle, to hear the voice of Dr. L. Meyer in the Desert of German Restraint.

There are few cases more distressing for a physician to witness, or difficult for him to manage, or in which he incurs greater risks or responsibilities, than those varieties of insanity in which refusal of food is a marked and prominent feature. To fix the exact moment when exhausted nature must be replenished; to determine when persuasion shall be given up and force, as a last resort, had recourse to; to estimate the quantity and quality of food required; to distinguish where medicines are life or death; to recognise the variety of medicine necessary to meet the requirements of the particular case; and, lastly, to decide on the mode of administration, are all matters of such primary importance, and require such a sound knowledge and extended experience, that one might deprecatingly exclaim, Nemo tenetur ad impossibile.