medical education, and, indeed, is not even recognised as within the sacred sphere of "legitimate medicine!" Thus, from ignorance of Hydropathic principles, and of the best mode of securing their skilful realisation in practice, the ice bag in the hands of Physic-doctors is little better than the chance-medley that is an attribute of all quackery. It is used as a sort of Abernethy club, and, because it is so simple an agent, it is rashly and foolishly concluded that no great harm can be done, should it strike Nature on the head instead of the disease.

Cholera and the Black Death have been selected for the purpose of illustrating, more forcibly, the essential worthlessness of all the resources of Drug practice in the presence of serious disease, for the more serious the disease the more worthless does that practice appear. Were there any truth in Drug theories, exactly the reverse ought to be the case, and powerful drugs should exhibit their powerful curative effects just in proportion to the malignancy of the disease to be overcome. But the contrary is the invariable effect, and the more virulent the disease, and the more powerfully "heroic" the remedies employed, the more certain is death. How, indeed, could it be otherwise, for surely as Dr. Wendell Holmes observes, "the presumption always is, that every noxious agent, including medicines proper, which hurts a well man hurts a sick one.' It only shows how wonderfully perverted the medical mind can become by educational training and professional habit-how insensible to the teachings of science and of experience, when a superstitious faith in Drug-poisons, based on a contrary presumption, still continues to be the recognised guide in medical practice.

Insanity-First introduction of the Bath in a Lunatic Asylum -Its highly Salutary effects-Experience of Superintendents of Asylums in Ireland and England-The Culpable apathy of those entrusted with the treatment of the Insane.

"INSANITY," says Bingham, in his treatise on mental disease, "is an affliction as singular as it is terrible-a perfect Proteus, whose mysterious nature and infinite diversity of forms have made it from time immemorial the wonder of the multitude, the sport of the unfeeling, the gain of empyrics, and the opprobrium of medical science. Pitiable, indeed, has been the lot of insane persons through centuries of neglect and mismanagement. But a brighter day has risen. Diseases of the mind are become a subject of general interest. They have been carefully investigated by numbers of highly educated professional men in this and other countries, and found to be in their early stages as tractable as others, and in their more advanced state not hopeless."-Observations on the Religious Delusions of Insane Persons, p. 7.

Hydropathic applications in various forms had long been practised in the treatment of lunacy, but on the establishment of the Hot-air Bath by Dr. Barter, the attention of Dr. Power, Resident Medical Superintendent of the Cork District Lunatic Asylum, was happily directed to it, and he became convinced that it could be employed with beneficial effects. Having, as he tells us, reflected deeply on the subject, for a considerable period, he concluded to recommend the Board of Governors to introduce the Bath, which, "after much discussion and opposition," they finally consented to do. At their solicitation Dr. Barter under.

took to superintend its erection, and in February, 1861, it was opened for the reception of patients.

The first Bath was administered to seventeen patients under the personal direction of Dr. Barter, who in one of his published lectures thus refers to the circumstance:

“At the first bath I gave at the lunatic asylum in Cork there were seventeen lunatics. When they were in and seated on the bench they then came to tell me all their diseases. In a short time they began to perspire, and it is a remarkable fact that you can recognise a lunatic by the peculiar smell from his person, and, except in cases of organic disease, it is that impurity going to the brain that makes him mad. It is the diseased condition of the blood acting on the brain, something in the way that whisky does, which causes those morbid ideas in which lunacy consists to emanate from the individual, and accordingly it will be found that no remedy exists for cases of lunacy at all comparable to the bath, owing to its purifying action on the blood. I asked the seventeen what brought them to the asylum. Their answer was very significant. Two-thirds of the number said it was whisky and porter, and the remaining third told me it was mercury.

'I am

clothes.' I asked

Now, attend to He said, 'When

"I then came to one man, and questioned him. He told me nothing about himself, but he said, 'I think this bath is good for every body.' I noticed that he was very intent on rubbing down his arm, and he was smelling it, and licking it too. Standing up again, he cried, 'I say this bath is good for every body.' Another one of them said, 'I say it is not.' I asked him why he said it was not good for every body. He said, a tailor, and if we were here always we would not want any the other man why he said it was good for every body. the answer, for it is worth a thousand lectures of mine. I was working in the fields my sweat rolled down from me like water. It had no nasty smell, nor disagreeable taste. Now sir,' said he, 'my perspiration is thick and nasty, like oil. It has a bad smell, and a worse taste. When the cook puts a pot on the fire, with a piece of meat or vegetable to boil, doesn't the fire throw the impurities to the top, and doesn't she take a spoon and skim them off?' I asked him, 'How long have you been here?' He said, 'Nine years.' I then further learned that he was what was called a taciturn lunatic, and that for six years previously he had not interchanged a single word with his fellow-men. His case was considered incurable, but after the fourth bath he was discharged as cured. He has remained out of the asylum since, a comfort to society, and to his fellow-men.

"I told the matter to Lord Carlisle, then Lord Lieutenant, and he directed the erection of a bath in Limerick, and directed his secretary to see about the erection of one at the Dundrum Criminal Lunatic Asylum. I now speak it here publicly-though the reporters are present—that it is

a public disgrace that those in authority, knowing as they do the benefits that have been conferred by the bath on the poor people in these institutions, do not extend the same blessings to other establishments in the country. Lunacy is a reproach to society, and lunatics of all others deserve everything we can do for them. God forbid that a man should be allowed to remain in the position-the terrible position I have described-for nine years. What must be the feeling of gratitude of that man and his family, when they found, that by means of the bath-by means of the simple enjoyment of this luxury-he was sent home rejoicing to earn his bread, and was enabled to thank me, as he did on his knees, for the great benefit conferred on him. Really when I get on this subject I can not restrain myself, when I consider the nights of anxious care and the days of toil, and the money and time I expended in bringing the bath to its present condition, and in endeavoring to have the institution brought home to and subservient to the poor."

Since then Dr. Power's extensive experience has convinced him, that the Bath is "a safe and powerful agent in the treatment of the insane," and it really is a cruel shame that such an economical agent is not at work in every asylum in the country. The logic of facts is irresistible, and Dr. Power's testimony thus deals with facts:

"The first persons submitted to its influence were much pleased with it, and were anxious to go again. Once in the week was the time at first appointed for its use, which was gradually made more frequent, and after about four months' use of it, I found seventeen persons had been perfectly cured by it, and sent home to their friends. The cases to which I allude were a long time in the house, and classified with the incurables.

"After some months' further experience of its beneficial action, new arrangements were made which enabled me to use it more generally and more frequently, and since then from fifty to eighty patients are daily submitted to its influence; many for its remedial action, but the greater number for motives of cleanliness; even these latter are wonderfully improved in appearance by its use, and have acquired the ruddy glow of health, instead of the pale and sickly look of invalids.

"Those who had suffered a relapse, after having been sent out cured, showed no unwillingness to return to the Asylum, and even asked to be taken there at once, in order that they might get the Bath, as they considered nothing else would cure them. I have never seen any ill-effects from the Bath, except a little nausea and a slight fainting in a few instances, but after a Bath or two those effects disappeared."

Dr. Power states, that after the introduction of the Bath the

per centage of cures rose from 59 to 76!-"being more than double the amount of cures produced by any Asylum in England," while deaths decreased fully one-half! No wonder that, with his experience, Dr. Power is earnest in recommending "the introduction of the Bath into all public institutions."

The governors of the Limerick District Lunatic Asylum, enlightened by the experience acquired in the Cork Asylum, also wisely resolved to introduce the bath, and it was erected and opened in 1862. Dr. Fitzgerald, the Resident Medical Superintendent, says "I am happy to have it in my power to record my opinion as to the favourable results produced by it." He has found its administration attended "generally with the most decided advantages"—that it is "a powerful auxiliary" in the treatment of lunacy, and a "useful medical adjuvant” in the general diseases with which insanity is frequently accompanied. In England, similar experience has been obtained. In 1862 the Bath was introduced in connection with the Lunatic Asylum, Hayward-Heath, Sussex, and Dr. Lockhart Robertson, the medical superintendent reports, that—

"As regards the use of the Bath in the treatment of mental diseases, I continue to entertain the most favourable opinion. As yet, we have no specific in the cure of insanity, such as quinine is for ague (?), and I, for one, do not look for such. Insanity is a disease depending on and associated with various functional disorders, and especially with the perverted nutrition of the organ of the mind. The treatment of these pathological conditions consists not in the mechanical administration of the specifics, but in the rational application of the principles of medicine to the special symptoms of each individual case.

"Thus, to illustrate my meaning by a case-A patient is suffering from an attack of mania, with great restlessness and incoherence of thought and violence, with increased action of the heart, and congestion of the head, and suppression of the catamenia and of the secretions of the skin, which is rough and dry. The indications here are to restore the balance of circulation, and thus to regulate the secretions, and the supply of blood to the brain, and so to restore the healthy action of the uterus, the skin, and the brain.

'Experience teaches us that such a result will only follow the slow and steady use of remedies influencing the action of the heart and of the nervous system. Of such remedies few are more powerful in their action