makes them revengeful and rebellious. It increases still more the depressed feelings resulting from imaginary depravities.

Now comes the consideration of the all-important question: public safety. Through a wise provision of our laws we are forced to pay taxes to be utilized for the protection of all against would-be offenders. Then in return we should have assurance that we will receive protection. Under the present system we all know that our asylums do not give us absolute protection, nor can it be made to do so more effectually without unnecessarily inflicting untold injustice upon the great majority of the unfortunates.

Animated by an innate beneficent spirit ever present in man, and enlightened by modern conceptions of the true nature of insanity, our alienists and asylum physicians all over the country are wisely advocating non-restraint of the insane and the elimination, as nearly as possible, of all appearances of asylums to prisons. To this end iron bars to windows and heavily barred doors have all been abandoned and wire grating and light wire doors substituted, and when sufficient help is at command doors to the sleeping rooms are entirely abandoned; all with the laudable hope to dispel the constant reminder of prison life. No one advance step is more commendable and it can be, and is being, carried out successfully in those States where the criminal insane are isolated in criminal asylums. But in our State, where the criminal insane are constantly mixed up with all others, the effort must either meet with constant defeat or the public must continue to suffer the occasional shock of violence and outrage from some escaped criminal lunatic. With this class no such attempt at the non-restraint treatment should be made. Their increased affliction does not make them less dangerous, but often more so, and our increased sympathy for them should not induce us to give them opportunities to escape, whereby they may impose their depraved propensities and destructive tendencies upon an innocent public. They should be put behind iron bars and kept there securely except when constantly attended.

By making their safe keeping more certain it will protect the public against them, and will also make those yet at liberty fear

more the consequences of their criminal acts. It will also lessen the constant multiplication of their kind until public sentiment becomes molded in favor of more stringent methods for prohibiting their propagation.

Many, even outside of the asylums, know of the ease with which patients may escape, and of other means through which they may gain their freedom. One of these possibilities I have often heard them mention, and criminals sometimes rely upon it when seeking to evade their punishment for crime by the plea of insanity.

I refer to the inexcusable and barbarious practice of which many of the old States have long since freed themselves, but to which our State is still clinging, though, I am glad to say, with much less tenacity than formerly,-the practice of changing the superintendents of these institutions with every new administration, for political reasons. At the time of these changes this class of patients rely upon opportunities for deceiving the new officials into the belief that they are either restored, or greatly improved, whereby they may gain privileges through which they may easily escape.

Dr. Charles H. Hughes, of St. Louis, in the April number of the Alienist and Neurologist, of which he is the distinguished editor, makes the following remarks upon this point:

"The insane had better not have the benefit of the insanity plea unless they are detained long enough after acquittal to assure the safety of the community from the consequences of a possible recurrence of their malady. The law should provide for a five-years' detention in case of actual acquittal on ground of insanity."

This is an excellent suggestion and should be made a law in our State. Mental storms which we can not detect because there still exists sufficient intellect and self-control to obscure their symptoms probably often occur in some individuals. For this reason insane criminals go at large for years unapprehended. They may temporarily lose self-control and commit one criminal act and then live for years, doing well the ordinary duties of life, while still in full possession of the same criminal potentialities, ever ready to

become active in case the one necessary occasion or circumstance presents.

Insanity is variously defined. Hack Tuke thus defines it: "A disease of the brain (idiopathic or sympathetic) affecting the integrity of the mind, whether marked by intellectual or emotional disorder."

Frederick Peterson says: "Insanity is a manifestation in language or conduct of disease or defect of the brain." To decide just where sanity ceases and insanity begins is in some cases most difficult. Who is able to determine correctly in all cases the amount of sanity or insanity present and the degree of responsibility to which some such criminals should be held for their acts? Indeed, are we wholly justifiable in saying that any individual has not a faulty judgment who will so lightly consider the deplorable consequences of his criminal acts? It is not impossible that they "can not contemplate things in the bright light of calm understanding, but view them in colors of distempered feelings."

W. Douglas Morrison, of the Wandworth prison in England, says: "The criminal is the product of anomalous biological conditions as well as adverse circumstances." Still, even with these facts before us, we can not subject a more normal public to the depredations of those less normal.

Of the whole population of our country, those of us who have our liberty and are supposed to be sane, a very small minority can be said to have perfect minds. All minds not perfect are necessarily imperfect, or, in other words, defective. It consequently follows that the great majority of us have defective minds. Then, must this great majority be excused from legal responsibility? If so, there will be but few legally responsible. If not, then we have to admit that some defectives are responsible. Admitting this necessarily admits of gradations of legal responsibility. This admitted, it is plain that we should not have inflexible laws making arbitrary punishment for the same offense against all offenders alike. If one defective must hang for his crime, then it is not wrong to confine securely and indefinitely another criminal who is more defective, and to isolate him from the present asylum with

all its impossibilities for escape, and to enjoy all the associations, special privileges and gentle nursing which our present asylums are so earnestly trying to bestow upon its unfortunates and diseased?

The object of any form of punishment provided for by law is deterrent and not revengeful in contemplation. The conclusion of the greatest minds and the accumulated experiences of centuries accord to punishment of criminal acts the most effective check possible to be placed upon crime. Fear of punishment and hope of reward modify the acts of all sane individuals, and the great majority of insane ones as well. The object and hope of all asylum management is the exclusion of all vestige of punishment, but the very nature of the situation, the fact of the asylum and the disordered mental state requiring restraint, is, within itself, punishment to the patient. Moving a patient from a nice quiet ward to a violent one with closer confinement and fewer privileges is punishment, as well as is administering apomorphia, even though it is done entirely through necessity, in order that violence to others may be prevented and any degree of order maintained, and not at all with the object or desire of punishment. And in almost every instance it has a marked deterrent effect upon their conduct, and in many cases of the most dangerously insane it positively stops all attacks of violent outbreaks and wrong conduct.

These facts prove conclusively that those possessed of the criminal and rebellious tendency, even with universally admitted mental aberration, can be held in check through fear of the results of their wrongdoings. So if by isolation it should appear that there is discrimination against one class of the mentally diseased merely because its course in them takes a criminal tendency, and should create the appearance of some degree of punishment, it will be only fortunate in that it will surely induce some to hold in check their criminal tendencies.

Then let us adjust our laws and our institutions to the greatest needs of the greatest number by confining constantly and securely our defective criminals, though some of them be greatly defective and diseased, thereby protecting society against constant dangers of irreparable impositions, and posterity against endless varieties of multiplied pollutions and defects.

SCHOOL LIFE AND INSANITY.

J. S. LANKFORD, M. D.,

SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS.

That insanity is increasing to an alarming extent is beyond all question. Formerly a few dark dungeons were sufficient to house the mad man. Now, however, notwithstanding our better enlightened views, and that the broad and humane tendencies of mankind have led to the building of an almost infinite number of modern institutions until the capacity is enormous, the ever-increasing cry is more room for the insane.

Private sanataria are springing up all over the country and are prospering on account of good patronage, and many patients are cared for in their homes, and yet we suffer the humiliation and disgrace of detaining in criminal jails many innocent unfortunates because we have no other place for them.

As a nation and as individuals we are philanthropic and quick to answer the call of distress from every source, but we are confronted with the impossible, almost, in keeping pace with the growing necessity for homes for this most unfortunate class of all human creatures.

If any one doubts these statements, let him inquire of the authorities of any of the States the number of insane cared for now as compared with any given period in the past. It must be admitted that changed conditions in environment and in methods of living are largely responsible for this fearful increase in insanity. There is no sociological question of the present day of equal importance, and students of racial and national evolution and degeneration can not afford to pass lightly by such an important state of things.

It is my purpose in this paper to discuss one of the important factors in the causation of this marvelous increase in mental trouble, towit, the high pressure in the school life of our children.