When the reader contrasts the preceding statement with the account recorded in the report of the committee, appointed to examine the physicians who have attended his majesty, &c. he will either be inclined to deplore the unskilfulness or mismanagement which has prevailed among those medical persons who have directed the treatment of mania in the largest public institution, in this kingdom, of its kind, compared with the success which has attended the private practice of an individual; or, _to require some other evidence, than the bare assertions of the man pretending to have performed such cures_[5]. It was deposed by that reverend and celebrated physician, that of patients placed under his care within three months after the attack of the disease, nine out of ten had recovered[6]; and also that the age was of no signification, unless the patient had been afflicted before with the same malady[7]. How little soever I might be disposed to doubt such a bold, unprecedented, and marvellous account, yet, I must acknowledge, that my mind would have been much more satisfied as to the truth of that assertion, had it been plausibly made out, or had the circumstances been otherwise than feebly recollected by that very successful practitioner. Medicine has generally been esteemed a progressive science, in which its professors have confessed themselves indebted to great preparatory study, and long subsequent experience, for the knowledge they have acquired; but in the case to which we are now alluding, the outset of the doctor's practice was marked with such splendid success, that time and observation have been unable to increase it. This astonishing number of cures has been effected by the vigorous agency of remedies, which others have not hitherto been so fortunate as to discover; by remedies which, when remote causes have been operating for twenty-seven years, such as weighty business, severe exercise, too great abstemiousness and little rest, are possessed of adequate power directly to _meet and counteract_ such causes[8]. It will be seen by the table that a greater number of patients have been admitted between the age of thirty and forty, than during any other equal period of life. There may be some reasons assigned for the increased proportion of insane persons at this age.