The DURATION of simple melancholia is from a few weeks to a dozen years; of acute melancholia, from a month to two or three years, after which it is apt to end in chronicity; melancholia stupida (with stupor) is usually curable, if at all, in the first year, although relapses are frequent, and in melancholia agitata from a year to three years is the common limit of the possibility of a cure. The PROGNOSIS in simple melancholia is favorable. Including cases treated out of asylums, probably 90 per cent. recover; in acute melancholia, uncomplicated with other diseases, not far from two-thirds recover; in melancholia attonita less than half get well; and in melancholia agitata nominal recovery occurs perhaps in a third of the cases, although I doubt whether complete restoration to health is seen often. In chronic melancholia the process of mental deterioration is slow. As the mind becomes impaired the delusions lose their activity and the mind reacts less readily, so that a state of less suffering and greater calm is reached, and the patients are often useful workers in asylums for many years, or remain in their own homes a constant source of anxiety to those who understand their condition. Many of them commit suicide. In treatment of melancholia the first indication is to protect society and the individual against acts of violence. Homicidal acts are not to be feared in simple melancholia, unless in persons of bad character and ugly temper, or in those few cases with the symptoms, in addition, of moral insanity or impulsive insanity. Suicide is so rare that precautions will not often be needed against it, provided the patient is so frank or so transparent that the appearance of distinct delusions may be detected and then guarded against. In cases of long standing, especially in persons beyond middle age, this is extremely difficult, and their treatment outside of asylums must always be attended with risk. In the other forms of melancholia the fact should be taken for granted that the patient is suicidal, and he may be also homicidal, so that he should be watched constantly and efficiently, and never left alone or with weak or helpless persons, no matter how free from suicidal determination or impulse he may have appeared. The puerperal mother, especially, is a source of the greatest danger to her child, even when she seems natural and fond. The degree and kind of watching varies, according to the severity of the case, from the constant presence or close proximity of some responsible person, who may sleep in the same room with the usual home-surroundings, to the most vigilant and wakeful personal care every moment day and night, and removal of every source of possible self-injury. In some few cases this can be well done only in an asylum or in a padded room. Some form of restraint, either personal or by confining or limiting the movements of the hands in rare cases of exceptional desperation, will be found necessary.