Such conservative thinkers as Sir Thomas More, one of England's greatest Lord Chancellors, the only one who ever cleared the docket of the Court of Chancery, continued to believe in it nearly a century after the Middle Ages had closed, but above all is quite frank in the expression of his opinion that some of the mutism, the tics, and bad habits, and repeated blasphemies, attributed to it, may be cured by soundly thrashing the young folks who are subject to them. Neurological experts will recall similar experiences in the modern time. Charcot's well-known story of the little boy whose _tic_ was the use of the word uttered by the corporal at Waterloo, and was cured by being soundly licked by some playmates at the Salpêtrière gate, is a classic. Some of the medieval cruelty represented unfortunate developments from the observations that had been made that a number of the impulsive neuroses and psychoneuroses could be favourably modified, or even entirely corrected, by attaching to the continuance of the habit a frequently repeated memory of distinctly unpleasant consequences that had come upon the patient because of it. Our experience in the recent war called to attention a great many cases of mutism, functional blindness, tremors, and incapacities of all kinds, some of which were cured by painful applications of electricity. The medieval use of the lash for such cases can be better understood now as the result of this very modern set of clinical observations. In the meantime it must not be forgotten that the people of the Middle Ages, even when they thought of insane and psychoneurotic persons as the subjects of diabolic possession, felt themselves under the necessity of providing proper physical care for these victims of disease or evil spirits, and as we know actually made excellent provision for them. Not only were the insane given shelter and kept from injuring themselves and others, but in many ways much better care was provided for them than has been the custom down almost to our own time. They had many fewer insane to care for; life was not so strenuous, or rather fussy, as it is in our time; large city life had not developed, and simple existence in the country was the best possible prophylactic against many of the mental afflictions that develop so frequently in the storm and stress of competitive industrial city existence. This prophylaxis was accidental, but it was part of the life of the time that needs to be appreciated, since it represents one of the helpful hints that the Middle Ages can give us for the reduction of our own alarmingly increasing insanity rate.