In the TREATMENT of acute mania the matter of foremost importance is that the physician should be able to sufficiently control his patient to prevent harm, and that he should have him in such a place as to give him an abundance of fresh air, unhampered by annoying and irritating limitations of his free will, restrictions of his liberty, and repression of his motor excitement. The risks of injury to others must be reasonably provided against. It goes without saying that few homes meet these indications: very few people can command a house to be converted into a virtual hospital, with the care of trained physicians to direct every little detail of treatment, and proper nursing. The public asylum, therefore, or the private retreat must usually be depended upon. In the case {163} of quiet young people, especially of young women whose illness may be of such a nature as to justify their marrying after recovery, and in the acute mania following childbirth, it is well worth the physician's while to make an effort to keep the patient in a private house when the conditions are such as to make such a course practicable. To the rest and quiet which may be had under such circumstances, with all the goings on of the house regulated to the patient's comfort and convenience, to prolonged hot baths, a full simple diet, given with the stomach-tube if necessary, as few medicines as can be got on with, the supervision of the nurses by some judicious member of the family, and the gentleness (combined, of course, with proper firmness) of home-influences, I attach very great importance in properly selected cases. But I attribute as much to the restful influence of keeping the patients among familiar scenes, and where some familiar face and voice can reassure them in their comparatively clear moments, instead of their being agitated and distressed to know how to account for the strange people and cell-like room of the insane ward to which they will awaken from their delirium in the hospital. It is something to avoid the excitement of commitment and removal to an asylum, with all that they involve, as well as the sight of demented patients, whose noise may make sleep impossible just when it is most needed. Acute mania seems to me to arise much less often than other mental diseases in definite associations which need to be escaped from for successful treatment. The term subacute mania is used by some writers for the milder cases of acute mania, just as acute delirious mania is a term which is applied to those violent cases of acute mania in which furious and prolonged delirium marks the disease, and in which there is a high death-rate and low proportion of recoveries.