ener, dairyman,
herdsman, shepherd, and engineer, that those who desired to be
employed with them, and might safely be intrusted, and were physically
able, could have opportunity of work.
Cottages should be scattered about the ground for the use and benefit
of such as might enjoy a segregate life, which could be used for
isolation in case of epidemic visitation. Recreation, games, drives,
and walks should be liberally provided.
A perfect, but not direct and offensive, surveillance should be
exercised over all the patients, with a view to securing them the
largest possible liberty compatible with the singular nature of their
malady.
In short, the hospital home for the chronic insane, or when acute and
chronic insane are domiciled together, should be a colonial home, with
the living arrangements as nearly those which would be most congenial
to a large body of sane people as the condition of the insane, changed
by disease, will allow.
It is as obvious as that experience demonstrates it, that the reigning
head or heads of such a community should be medical, and not
that medical mediocrity either which covets and accepts political
preferment without medical qualifications.
The largest personal liberty to the chronic insane may be best secured
to them by provision for the sexes in widely separated establishments.
It is plain that the whole duty of man is not discharged toward his
fallen insane brother when he has accomplished his sequestration from
society at large, or fed and housed him well. The study of the needs
of the insane and of the duty of the State in regard to them is as
important and imperative a study as any subject of political economy.
* * * * *
THE COURAGE OF ORIGINALITY.
Most of us are at times conscious of hearing from the lips of
another, or reading from the printed page, thoughts that have existed
previously in our own minds. They may have been vague and unarranged,
but still they were our own, and we recognize them as old friends,
though dressed in a more fitting and expressive costume than we ever
gave them. Sometimes an invention or a discovery dawns upon the world
to bless and improve it, and while all are engaged in extolling it
some persons feel that they have had its germs floating in their
minds, though from the lack of favorable conditions, or some other
cause, they never took root or became vital. An act of heroism is
performed, and a by
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