e who know anything about the treatment
of the insane, even in quite recent times. Measures of rigid restraint
were employed for dangerous cases. Patients who had shown
manifestations of violence were likely to be chained. Severe and
unusual punishments were sometimes inflicted. Of all this there is no
doubt. Abuses crept into institutions. The insane were sometimes
brutally treated or hideously neglected. These, however, are
objections that can be urged against our system of taking care of the
insane in many places even at the present day. In certain states, in
order to lessen the expense of caring for the insane, they are kept in
departments in the Poor Houses, and every now and then a legislative
committee of investigation tells the story of appalling evils that
have been discovered. It was not because they thought that possessed
people deserved punishment, nor because they hoped thus to get the
devils to go out of them, that the medieval generations allowed such
things in their asylums, but because human nature will neglect its
duties toward the ailing unless carefully superintended, and because
regular attendants become hardened in their feelings sooner or later,
when they serve only for pay, and the result always is the abuse of
patients.

In proportion to the number of patients cared for, there was much more
need for restraint in those old days than at present. As a rule,
during the Middle Ages prisons and asylums were few. Only the
violently insane, who already had actually committed some serious
crime or threatened to, were kept in the asylums. For these restraint
is needed even at the present {379} time. We have learned to apply
milder measures by employing many more attendants, but even that has
come only in the last generation or two. The milder cases of insanity
were not kept in asylums, but were allowed to wander about the
country, or were cared for in their families with a devotion of which
one finds no example at the present time; or if the insane person
belonged to a noble family, very often the patient was kept in the
house of a retainer and gently cared for. The fact that the milder
cases were allowed to wander about the country might seem to be
dangerous, but is not so serious as is ordinarily thought. Only a
limited number of insane patients are likely to be violent, and these,
as a rule, show manifestations of it early in the history of their
affection. It was the frequent meeting with these harml