Several years after this, he bit both his little fingers off; and though the suicidal disposition has in a great measure subsided, he is still at times much excited, but does not require any restraint. The second case was one of acute mania. A powerful young man refused all food under the impression that it was poisoned, and imagined that every one who went near him intended to murder him. Every inducement to get him to take food was in vain, and though a sufficient body of attendants, under my own inspection, attempted to do what was necessary for him, he became so much bruised in holding him in his struggles to assail the attendants, when it was urgently requisite that food should be administered into the stomach, that I decided upon confining his hands, and both food and medicine were then readily administered. The result certainly justified the means employed, as the excitement subsided, and he soon recovered." So much for the experience of the medical attendant of a public asylum; now let us hear the testimony of Dr. Forbes Winslow, whose experience in his private asylum, Sussex House, Hammersmith, has been as great perhaps as that of any man, since he has lived with his family for ten years in the very midst of his patients, and who is surpassed by no one in his enlightened and gentle treatment of the insane. "Patients," he says, in his Report to the Commissioners, "have often expressed a wish to be placed under mechanical restraint, should I, in my judgment, believe that they would, when much excited, commit overt acts of violence, and be dangerous to themselves and others. In cases like these, mechanical restraint may for a short period be applied, not only without detriment, but with positive advantage as a curative process. Several instances relative of this fact have come under my observation. I have seen cases where no food or medicine could be administered without subjecting the patient to restraint. In these cases, if all idea of cure had been abandoned, and I could have reconciled it to my conscience to allow the disease to take its uninterrupted course, and have permitted the patient to exist upon the minimum amount of nutriment, and take no medicine, all restraint might easily be dispensed with; but considering the cure of my patient paramount to every other consideration, I had no hesitation as to the humane and right mode of procedure."