MENTAL HOSPITALS REPORT

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22467, 30 July 1938, Page 20

MENTAL HOSPITALS REPORT

TO THE EDITOR OF THE PRESS. Sir, —The able and thought-stirring leading article in “The Press” on the Mental Hospitals Report cannot fail to commend itself to all thinking and earnest-minded people interested in human welfare. It is not enough to ■ protect society by interning the ieeble- ‘ minded and insane: but the cause must ; be investigated and understood, the ego j of the patient studied and freed from ; its disruptive control; and all this requires the extension of our studies into the fourth dimension. So far, little or I no preparation has been made in this ; direction. Prejudice and ignorance 1 have been allowed to obscure the rea- ‘ son, and sitting in judgment on a sub- ‘ ject of which they know nothing, have ' caused the committal of sufferers to 1 these institutions, with appalling re- * suits. The patient becomes worse in--2 stead of better, in the majority of 1 cases; and so our institutions grow, s and become a burden on the common-

ity. Is there, then, no hope for those whose minds distressed have resulted in their committal to the asylum? No solution by which one may be cured, one asks? Yes, one replies, there is hope. The solution of many of these cases is simple. It is by way of the psychic door. A large percentage of the cases, those of obsession, or possession, as the Bible has it, are curable, when taken in time and treated in the right way; and when our clergy and doctors, discarding their prejudices, are prepared to sit down and learn, as little children, the A.B.C. of psychic phenomena and the laws governing mediumship, the work of curing the insane will proceed apace. • Then will cease those stupid tirades one sometimes hears from the pulpit, and mediaeval laws on the Statute Book be revoked; and mediumship, in its rightful place, will be used for the betterment and spiritual progress of mankind.—Yours, etc.. E. M. LOVELL-SMITH. P.S.—A book that all might read with profit is “Thirty Years Among the Dead.” by Dr. Carl Wickland, of Los Angeles, California. Dr, Wickland and his wife, a powerful medium, aided by voluntary sitters, devoted 40 yean of their lives to curing the insane. July 28. 1938. [This correspondence is now closed. — Ed., “The Press.”]