Mental Diseases and their Modern Treatment

During the past twenty-five years I have been engaged in the practical work of ministering to the needs of the insane. This work has resulted in a gradual development of that form of treatment which has been designated as "The Hospital Idea". In other words, the asylum has given place to the hospital in the protection and restoration of mental invalids. The fact is now generally recognized that the insane man is a sick man, and needs for his comfort and cure the application of such means as are ordinarily used for the benefit of the sick in a modern general hospital. Acting under this belief, our patients have been favored with such treatment as may be best exemplified by skilled physicians, trained nurses, and hospital methods and appliances. At the Middletown State Homeopathic Hospital there have been afforded not only hospital measures for the recuperation of the mentally sick, but the indicated homeopathic remedy has been applied with conscientious fidelity in each case. Individualization, and hospitalization, and homeopathic treatment, have been the methods pursued in the institutions under my charge during the past quarter of a century. This work embodies, in a series of lectures, a long experience in working for the good of the insane. In it I have tried to explain the nature of the disease under consideration; also its causes, its tendencies, and its conclusions under favorable treatment.

This work is not an exhaustive treatise upon insanity. It consists simply of a few "blaze marks" guiding the way through the wilderness of mental disorder, and into the sunny fields of health. If it shall become an aid to the medical student in the acquisition of knowledge, and to the busy practitioner in the care and cure of the sick, then its purpose will have been accomplished.

**Contents and Sample Pages**