The more acute the disease, the more likely it is to be of not long duration, and, as a rule, the easier it is to treat it without removal from home, except in cases of great violence. The question whether home-influences are benefiting or injuring an individual patient must often be settled by experiment. It is a great comfort to many of the insane to see their friends, no matter how seldom, at times when they feel that they need their support and influence; and this is impossible unless the friends are near at hand. There are cases in which familiar scenes and faces and voices reassure the patient when delirium subsides, and during a short interval of comparative mental clearness their sedative influence is great as compared with the confusion and worry of trying to understand the new surroundings of a hospital ward or the sight of strange people and the sound of unknown voices. The mere fact of delusions being connected with the home-surroundings and members of the family is not so important as the character of the delusions; and the influence of the relatives is often most salutary, even when the patient has most distressing thoughts concerning them or even when he is too insane to be always sure of their identity. If the insanity arises in a violent emotional shock, and home sights and surroundings recall and arouse the mental pain, as is the rule in such cases, recovery usually depends upon removal from home. The matter of suicide where there are means of proper watching does not influence me in my decision, as I think that the dangers of self-destruction are fully as great in asylums as outside with sufficient care, whereas the stimulus to the patient to kill himself from both insane and sane motives is greater the more he is surrounded with depressing influences. On the other hand, it not seldom happens that the diversity of sights in the hospital, the routine, the varied events of the day, the amusements, the walks, the drives, even the discomforts and annoyances, serve to distract the patient's mind from his delusions better than the same result can be accomplished under the pleasant influences at home, while a natural feeling of self-respect prevents those who have power of self-control from giving way to their impulses before strangers, especially when they know that such conduct will take them to a lower ward with less agreeable associates.