near he always was to
being a lunatic and how wise it was always to consider the lunatic as a
brother.

Formerly a lunatic was considered as a separate being, quite apart from
other members of society. The old prejudices which banished the patient
from the tribe as a useless and dangerous individual had diminished no
doubt with respect to the diseases of the body, which were more and more
regarded as frequent and natural things to which each of us might be
exposed. But these prejudices persisted with respect to some sexual
diseases that were still considered ignominious and chiefly with respect
to diseases of the mind. No doubt some intelligent and charitable
physicians took interest in the lunatic, endeavored to spare him many
sufferings, to defend him, to take care of him. But the people feared
the lunatic and despised him as if he had been struck by some
malediction which excommunicated him. I have seen lately a patient's
parents upset with emotion, as they had to cross the gardens of the
asylum to visit their daughter, at the single thought that they might
catch sight of a lunatic. This individual, in fact, had lost in the eyes
of the public the particular quality of man, reason, which, it appears,
distinguishes us from beasts; he seemed still living, but he was morally
dead; he was no longer a man.

No doubt it was a dreadful misfortune when some member of a family
became insane, but this terrible calamity, which nothing could make one
anticipate or avoid, was happily exceptional, like thunderbolts. The
other men and even the members of the family presented nothing similar
and regarded themselves with pride as very different to this wretched
being transformed into a beast. This victim of heavenly curse was
pitied, settled comfortably in a nice pavilion at Bloomingdale and never
more spoken of. People still preserve on this point ideas similar to
those they had formerly about tuberculosis, known only under the form of
terrible but exceptional pulmonary consumption. Now it has at last been
understood that there are slight tuberculoses, curable, but tremendously
frequent. It will be the same with mental disorders; one day it will be
recognized that under diverse forms, more or less attenuated they exist
to-day on all sides, among a crowd of individuals that one does not feel
inclined to consider as insane.

Little by little, in fact, men have had to state with astonishment that
all lunatics were not at Bloomingdale