reflectors do not appear to have been
employed up to the present.

* * * * *

STATE PROVISION FOR THE INSANE.[1]

[Footnote 1: Remarks following "Definition of Insanity,"
published in the October number of _The Alienist and
Neurologist_, and read before the Association of Charities and
Corrections at St. Louis, Oct. 15, 1884.]

By C. H. HUGHES, M.D.

We live in an age when every uttered sentiment of charity toward the
insane is applauded to its remotest echo; an age in which the chains
and locks and bars and dismal dungeon cells and flagellations and
manifold tortures of the less humane and less enlightened past are
justly abhorrent; an age which measures its magnificent philanthropy
by munificent millions, bestowed without stint upon monumental
mansions for the indwelling of the most pitiable and afflicted of the
children of men, safe from the pitiless storms of adverse environment
without which are so harshly violent to the morbidly sensitive and
unstable insane mind; an age in which he who strikes a needless
shackle from human form or heart, or removes a cause of human torture,
psychical or physical, is regarded as a greater moral hero than he
who, by storm or strategy of war taketh a resisting fortress; an age
when the Chiarugis and Pinels, the Yorks and Tukes, of not remotely
past history, and the Florence Nightingales and Dorothea Dixes of our
own time, are enshrined in the hearts of a philanthropic world with
greater than monumental memory.

Noble, Christlike sentiment of human charity! Let it be cherished and
fostered still, toward the least of the children of affliction and
misfortune, as man in his immortal aspirations moves nearer and
nearer to the loving, charitable heart of God, imaging in his work the
example of the divinely incarnate Master!

But let us always couple this exalted sentimentality with the stern
logic of fact, and never misdirect or misapply it in any of our
charitable work. Imperfect knowledge perverts the noblest sentiments;
widened and perfected knowledge strengthens their power. A truly
philanthropic sentiment is most potent for good in the power
of knowledge, and may be made most powerful for evil through
misconception of or inadequate comprehension of facts. As we grow in
aspirations after the highest welfare of the insane, let us _widen our
knowledge of the real nature of insanity and the necessities for its
amelioration, pr