FOOTNOTES: [224] Particulars respecting Switzerland and Germany were obtained for the Charity Organization Committee by Drs. Ireland and Beach. [225] It is due to the late Dr. Poole, of Montrose, to state that so early as 1819 he drew attention to the education of idiots in an article in the _Edinburgh Encyclopædia_. [226] Dr. Ireland has now removed from Larbert to Preston Lodge, Prestonpans, near Edinburgh, and receives imbeciles into his house. CHAPTER IX. SCOTLAND. Our reference in a previous chapter to the singular superstitions connected with the treatment of the insane in Scotland, renders it unnecessary to do more than point out in this place the substratum of popular opinion and feeling, upon which the infusion of new ideas and a scientific system of treatment had to work. To some extent it was the same in other countries, but judging from the records of the past, as given or brought to light by writers like Heron, Dalyell, and Dr. Mitchell, no country ever exceeded Scotland in the grossness of its superstition and the unhappy consequences which flowed from it. When we include in this the horrible treatment of the insane, from the prevalent and for long inveterate belief in witchcraft, we cannot find language sufficiently strong to characterize the conduct of the people, from the highest to the lowest in the land, until this monstrous belief was expelled by the spread of knowledge, the influence of which on conduct and on law some do not sufficiently realize. The lunatic and the witch of to-day might aptly exclaim-- "The good of ancient times let others state; I think it lucky I was born so late." As regards the property of the insane, the Scotch law, from a remote period, appears to have been that the ward and custody of it belonged to the prince as _pater patriæ_. In the beginning of the fourteenth century, the keeping and custody of persons of "furious mind," by a statute of Robert I., devolved upon their relatives, and, failing them, on the justiciar or sheriff of the county. The custody of "fatuous persons" is said to have been committed to the next agnate (nearest male relative on the father's side), while that of the "furious" was entrusted to the Crown, "as having the sole power of coercing with fetters."[227] An Act passed in 1585, c. 18, in consequence of abuses in regard to the nominations of tutors-at-law, provided that the nearest agnate of the lunatic should be preferred to the office of tutor-at-law. The practice was originally to issue one brieve, applicable to both furiosity and fatuity. The statute just mentioned continues the _regula regulans_, as to the appointment of tutors-at-law for lunatics.