TREATMENT OF THE INSANE.

Evening Post, Volume XXI, Issue 93, 22 April 1881, Page 2

TREATMENT OF THE INSANE.

In a report of great interest, jost published on the asylums of Europe by Df. G. M. Beard, of Now York, an eminent authority on diseases of tho nervous system, the author speaks in the highest terms of the methods of treating the insane in these institutions. Great Britain, however, Dr. Beard thinks, easily bears away the palm in this matter from the Continent, the system pursued in Eome. of the Scotch institutions especially bein«r. in his opinion, nearly perfect. What struck him most of all, as one accustomed to the American sy&tera, was the almost complete want of restraint, and the use of employmenr,rastead of labonr,as a therapeutic agent. The results have beenof the happiest kind, and Dr. Beard thinks that America is this respect might well follow the example of Fnrope, treating the insane aa children, for such essentially they are. Dr. Beard, however, is of opinion that in the United States they know much better than in Furope how to trout those morbid states of the nervous system that often takd to insanity. This, he :r.aintains, is the philosophical method of combating insanitytreating the insane before they aro insine, arresting candidates for lunacy before they have popped on tho threshold of the asylum. In short, in the nervous organisation, as in tho political, the philosophical and' only radically effective method is to apply remedial measures when tho very first symptom!! show themselves, instead of drift* in" into ineffective restraint after the mis* chief is dove.