In speaking of the management of insane persons, it is to be understood that the superintendant must first obtain an ascendency over them. When this is once effected, he will be enabled, on future occasions, to direct and regulate their conduct, according as his better judgment may suggest. He should possess firmness; and, when occasion may require, should exercise his authority in a peremptory manner. He should never threaten, but execute: and when the patient has misbehaved, should confine him immediately. As example operates more forcibly than precept, I have found it useful, to order the delinquent to be confined in the presence of the other patients. It displays authority; and the person who has misbehaved becomes awed by the spectators, and more readily submits. It also prevents the wanton exercise of force, and those cruel and unmanly advantages which might be taken when the patient and keeper are shut up in a private room. When the patient is vigorous and powerful, two, or more should assist in securing him; by these means it will be easily effected; for, where the force of the contending persons is nearly equal, the mastery cannot be obtained without difficulty and danger. As management is employed to produce a salutary change upon the patient, and to restrain him from committing violence on others and himself, it may be proper here to enquire, upon what occasions, and to what extent, coercion may be used. The term coercion has generally been understood in a very formidable sense, and not without reason. It has been recommended, by very high medical authority, to inflict corporal punishment upon maniacs, with a view of rendering them rational by impressing terror[9]. What success may have followed such disgraceful and inhuman treatment I have not yet learned, nor should I be desirous of meeting with any one who could give me the information. If the patient be so far deprived of understanding, as to be insensible why he is punished, such correction, setting aside its cruelty, is manifestly absurd. And if his state be such, as to be conscious of the impropriety of his conduct, there are other methods more mild and effectual. Would any rational practitioner, in a case of phrenitis, or in the delirium of fever, order his patient to be scourged? He would rather suppose that the brain or its membranes were inflamed, and that the incoherence of discourse, and violence of action, were produced by such local disease. We have seen, by the preceding dissections, that the contents of the cranium, in all the instances that have occurred to me, have been in a morbid state. It should therefore be the object of the practitioner to remove such disease, rather than irritate and torment the sufferer. Coercion should only be considered as a protesting and salutary restraint.