the cures were about 43 in 100 admissions. In Wakefield County Asylum from 1819 to 1826 the cures were 42 in 100. In Lancaster County Asylum from 1817 to 1832 the cures were about 40 per cent.

The Gloucester Asylum from 1823 to 1832 dismissed nearly 50 per cent. of its inmates cured. The same average result was obtained in the Retreat, near York, from 1812 to 1833.

Now it must be admitted that the treatment of the insane was, so far as comfort and science were concerned, at a very low ebb during the early twenty-five years of this century. The "magnificent period" has lasted from 1835 to the present day. What do the statistics of recoveries (which relate to the past thirty years) prove in comparison with those just mentioned, and which belong to the past? In the Somerset County Asylum 3284 patients were admitted from 1848 to 1868, and the recoveries were 42 per cent. The average number of the cures of the Scottish Asylums amounts to about from 37 to 40 per cent. The average percentage of recoveries to admissions into English asylums during the past ten years has been, for the county and borough asylums, 33.93; and for the private licensed asylums of the metropolis, 27.60. It follows that the cures of the insane in our fine asylums are not more numerous than they were from 1748 to 1814, when the treatment of the insane was a disgrace to humanity. If anything is to be made out of the statistics, the percentage of cures has rather fallen off. Whilst every other disease has been less persistent and has been more curable, insanity remains as a dead-weight on the statistics of our social miseries. To refer this unsatisfactory state of things to the comforts of asylums, or to the system of treatment adopted by the able men who labour in this thankless part of the medical profession, is simply absurd.

The cause of the mass of incurability is tolerably evident, and the defects of the system which prevent a cure are so also.

It is admitted that the majority of the insane are more curable during the first year of the attack than subsequently, and that mania is, as a rule, followed by recovery in from 90 to 95 per cent. of cases. But every month that elapses without amendment in the mental condition complicates the affliction and diminishes the chance of recovery. Every relapse acts in the same manner. The quiet and chronic cases are of course those whose persistence in the same state renders the percentage of causes so unsatisfactory. Not only is the malady produced in them, either by hereditary predisposition, by a long perversion of the nutrition of the brain by reason of mental and moral abuse, or by organic disease, but it is perpetuated by the rest-and-be-thankful treatment which sooner or later must be adopted under the present system. The routine of an asylum and its moral and physical atmosphere act after a while per

niciously. The want of definite work, of exercise which interests, of relief from miserable sights, and of those happinesses of home which cannot be replaced by any luxurious comforts, together with the effects of the dismal companionship of fellow-sufferers, during the periods of temporary sanity, are constantly producing depressing results. Dr. Boyd, writing in 1869, states that in his experience the tubercular class of diseases produces very fatal results in the chronically insane. He remarks, that "However we regard the fact, whether from the numbers collected, or from insanity being more prevalent amongst phthisical (consumptive) patients than others, or from both causes, the mortality from tubercular disease was about double amongst chronic cases of insanity in both sexes to that of the adult male and female population of England in 1866." The longer the duration of the residence in the asylum, the greater was the mortality from consumption.*

In ordinary medical practice the consumptive are not more frequently transferred to the alienist physician on account of mental derangement, than those suffering from other diseases, and of course less frequently than those with disease of the nervous system. It is the depressing effect of association and of the want of physical labour that adds to the list of the consumptive in our great asylums.

Here, then, is one of the most prominent causes of the incurability of the insane brought into definite relation with the asylum system. Even if it were admitted, which it cannot be, that the majority of the insane are afflicted with tubercular diseases before they enter asylums, the peculiar arrangements of the establishments are not those which would benefit the constitution or retard the issue.

Consider another point. The miseries and the excitements of one age were pretty well equalled in all others; but it is by no means clear that education, however trivial, does not add to the wretchedness of the pauperized, and of those who, whilst they witness the splendid luxury and waste of their fellow-men, are dragged down by circumstances into a hopeless condition of semi-starvation and drudgery whose only termination is in a long vista of want, with the poorhouse and grave in the distance. The want of mental and physical resiliency amongst the poorest of our urban and agricultural populations is evident to those who care to mix with them. The well-disposed and honest are in constant fear about the sustentation of their families, and the careless are, as a rule, steady drinkers and unsteady workers. The wants of the primitive condition of mankind are superadded to the miseries of our social state; and the poverty, which is hardly ever to be cast off, prevents that healthy direction of the mind and senses which the early hunters enjoyed, but which appears to be incompatible with the present state of things. There is nothing wonderful, then, in the state* Journal of Mental Science,' 1869, pp. 200-2.

ment that the present condition of the pauperized, and of those who must become paupers in the ordinary course of events, is favourable to hebetude and to mental decadence, as well as to physical degeneration. It is clear that the majority of the pauper insane enter asylums with the malady in their very bones, and year after year hereditary predisposition adds to its intractable nature. Our social state is producing year after year an increasing amount of insanity more than ever difficult of cure.

It is evident to those who can consider the question dispassionately that the method of treatment of the majority of the chronic cases forming the bulk of the inmates of asylums is inordinately expensive, unsatisfactory as regards its results, and not right in principle. It is a failure. There is no doubt about the efficiency of the treatment adopted in asylums in cases of mania and in those where suicide is feared; moreover, there is a social necessity for separating those thus afflicted from their fellow-men. The total alteration of scene and diet, the moral influence of strange faces, and of the clock-like regularity of the establishment, constitute, however, with that valuable medicine, time, the principal curative agents. Medicine, so far as drugs are concerned, has advanced very slightly since the time of the Greeks in the treatment of insanity, and no important addition to our knowledge concerning the relation of drugs to insanity has emanated from the alienist physicians of the past twenty years. Every severe disease has attracted the urgent attention of the medical protession, and those which were formerly very fatal are now so managed that a cure is by no means rare, and, moreover, it bears a definite relation to the administration of drugs. But the medical treatment of the insane is in the hands of a few, and the alienists constitute a very close borough: so of course no progress commensurate with the spirit of the age is made. Kind Nature cures the majority of the lunatics who recover, but she certainly does not get the credit. She is opposed by the asylum system in the cure of the chronic cases, and therefore they remain much the same as fifty years since.

Our social errors produce such types of madness that even the Commissioners are downhearted, and begin to be philosophical. They write, despairingly, as follows:

"Hitherto our efforts have been mainly directed to the provision of asylums for the cure and care of the insane; but these efforts, however beneficial they may be in many respects, have, as we have seen, totally failed to meet the increase of lunacy. That more successful results would be obtained from the rational education of the people, and from the introduction of physiological instruction into schools, may very reasonably be expected. The prevention of insanity is not only a far nobler aim than the provision of accommodation after the mischief has been done, but it is one which

there is reason to hope would greatly contribute to sap the sources of pauperism.

The rational-education cry is all very well, but, for reasons already given, there may be much doubt whether it will be the panacea for lunatic pauperism. Our difficulty is not, however, at present how to prevent insanity, but how to treat the apparently incurable-those who do not receive benefit from the present asylum system-properly and successfully, and without extravagant outlay. When a system is fully developed, any proposition which interferes with it is of course ridiculed. Just as the asylum system was a matter of slow growth, and one full of trouble and mistakes, so all others, more or less antagonistic to it, must commend themselves to us, whilst they pass through stages of incompleteness, misdirection, and error. If the insane colony of Gheel is mentioned as a reasonable institution, its shortcomings are of course placed prominently before us, but really they are equalled in many English asylums, and its statistics prove that the unfortunate patients afflicted with chronic insanity are cured in about the same ratio. They have more liberty, and it is possible for them to wear out their irritability by continuous labour. Certainly they do not cost so much for maintenance as the English demented, who crawl about the yards and grounds of the asylum like flies out of season. But a system of treatment of the chronic insane on the Gheel plan, and without its evident errors, would give the afflicted a better chance than they now have. There are many large asylums with plenty of land around them, and some of the insane work on the land; but this labour is not universal, and its mercantile value is always considered. If a superintendent turned the whole of his chronic cases out into the fields day after day, and managed to direct the attention of each one to work which was possible, it would not be a more troublesome proceeding than teaching a class of idiots (and this is well done, after a while, with perseverance), and the benefit must be great. If a great village, with proper cottages, was founded in each county on land which could be cultivated without any great loss by skilled labour and by the chronic insane, the success would not be less, so far as curation is concerned, than it now is, and it might be greater. The comforts of the patients would be the same, and the same staff of officials would be necessary. The dreary walls, the awful sameness of surroundings, the close company of fellow-lunatics sadly differing in mental peculiarities, would be got rid of, and the restraint would be reduced to its minimum. Doubtless there would be occasional scenes of trouble, excitement, and violence; but are there not such within the walls of the best-regulated asylums? Perhaps they might be less frequent under the open canopy of heaven. As a matter of expense, * Report, 1869.

there can be no doubt that the village system would be very economical, in fact just as reasonably so as the present asylums are scandalously expensive when their expenditure is contrasted with their results.

The old notions concerning the origin and nature of insanity are rapidly going out of fashion, and it is ceasing to be considered a disease of the mind per se. This change of belief implies no irreverence towards God's special providence, but a growing opinion that many peculiarities of modern civilization are sufficiently antagonistic to the laws of nature to render unstable that normal balance between the mind and the body which almost invariably exists in savage nations. Providing that the body is well nourished and the brain well worked, there appears to be no increase of mental alienation in spite of mercantile disaster and political changes. Let long years of unrequited toil, insufficient and improper nourishment, be passed amongst all that degrades humanity, and the improperly educated brain will become unhinged by an unusual series of exertions. Civilized poverty is the hotbed of insanity and of a type which is singularly irremediable. It follows that whilst moral management may be necessary for some lunatics, a special physical treatment which must bear a definite reference to the constitutional causes of the ailment is absolutely required for the majority. This method of treatment cannot be obtained under the present system of seclusion in asylums where the success in re-establishing reason is not greater than it was when all the horrors of the madhouse were in full force, but it may be successfully carried out under an intelligent supervision, adapted to the village and cottage system foreshadowed by the insane colony of Gheel.

III. THE METALLURGICAL INDUSTRY OF
CLEVELAND.

THROUGHOUT the whole history of applied science and the metallurgic arts there is probably nothing which can at all compare with the condition of things now prevailing in Cleveland. In the more limited acceptation of the term, Cleveland is, strictly speaking, but a small portion of the North Riding of Yorkshire,-probably about one-third of it; but, from the fact that the staple industry is the same throughout a large part of Teesdale and South Durham as in Cleveland proper, the term has now popularly acquired a more extended signification. Within a very limited area of the district referred to, the last twenty years have seen an industrial development which has no equal, either in ancient or in modern