We have in two previously published papers† promised to discuss the following questions, and now attempt to fulfil the promise in the following pages. The questions are:

1. 1. What false ideas are still prevalent among the public at large in relation to lunatic asylums and their superintendents and psychological physicians in general?

2. 2. Are the mode and description of state supervision and control, as exercised over asylums, sufficient and satisfactory?

3. 3. To what persons, and under what conditions, shall the privilege be exclusively conceded to establish, superintend, and carry on establishments for the insane?

4. 4. Ought lunatic asylums to be entrusted to religious corporations?

5. 5. May not families of position and competency be lawfully permitted to retain the charge and management of their mentally afflicted relatives, under the “patronal or family régime”?

Upon a recent occasion we took some pains to review the various significations in which the word “psychology” has been of late employed. We found that among some writers the use of this word had absolutely run wild. We pointed out that the word had not been very long established in the language of science, and that its significance, even at present, admitted of some latitude. We expressed our opinion that the most warrantable use of the word is to signify the phenomenology of the human mind, including—1, the phenomena of knowledge; 2, the phenomena of feeling; and 3, the phenomena of effort; but that it seemed still possible to give an extension to its meaning, so that it should include the psychology of man in the sense just indicated, or anthropo-psychology, and the psychology of the dumb creation, or eneo-psychology. If such an arrangement as this were adopted, it would nearly correspond with that which may be termed metaphysical psychology. The epithet metaphysical, as here applied to psychology, is not to be regarded as tautological or superfluous, because it is designed to denote that old form of the science of the pneumatology of the human mind which rests exclusively upon what is taught by consciousness; while physiological psychology includes all that can be determined upon probable evidence of the phenomonology of the functions of consciousness in the animal kingdom at large.

It has been suggested to me by a professional friend, in whose judgment I place much confidence, that I shall aid in demonstrating the value of night nursing in the moral treatment of the insane, and perhaps remove prejudices which yet exist against its use, by laying before the members of this Association a record of my experience of the system at the Sussex Asylum during the first half of this year.

Since the opening of this asylum on the 1st March, 1848, to the 1st December, 1860, one thousand male patients have been admitted, in which are included 130 readmissions, the actual net number of individuals admitted being 870.

The cases which one generally meets in an asylum often diner in no small degree from those of ordinary practice. To ensure sleep in a patient under delirium tremens, or other such short-lived malady, is to establish cure at once, and the result melts into the satisfactory finish of “cured in a few days thereafter.” Fortunately or unfortunately, such bright prospects are not often held out to asylum practitioners, but yet the efficient means for procuring sleep are frequently not less clamant. In many of our cases there is no hope of recovery, even although sleep of the soundest nature was obtained; nevertheless, it is no mean aim to command such for one who, during a paroxysm, passes night after night ill a morbid condition, whether wildly shouting and beating at the walls and doors he disturb the rest of all, and prostrate himself, or with a quieter demeanour remain in bed with unclosed lids in melancholy whispering. The boon conferred on the household in the former, and on the patients in both cases, is sufficiently obvious; and it is for such chronic, not less than the acute cases, that I would recommend the subcutaneous injection. We cannot, indeed, say in such cases that the patient went out cured shortly after, for that they may never do; but the comfort and advantage resulting from their successful narcotism must be familiar to all in our department. Of acute cases I need say little; in them the state of matters is conspicuous enough.