In the most violent state of the disease, the patient should be kept alone in a dark and quiet room, so that he may not be affected by the stimuli of light or sound, such abstraction more readily disposing to sleep. As in this violent state there is a strong propensity to associate ideas, it is particularly important to prevent the accession of such as might be transmitted through the medium of the senses. The hands should be properly secured, and the patient should also be confined by one leg: this will prevent him from committing any violence. The straight waistcoat is admirably calculated to prevent patients from doing mischief to themselves; but in the furious state, and particularly in warm weather, it irritates and increases that restlessness, which patients of this description usually labour under. They then scorn the incumbrance of cloathing, and seem to delight in exposing their bodies to the atmosphere. Where the patient is in a condition to be sensible of restraint, he may be punished for improper behaviour by confining him to his room, by degrading him, and not allowing him to associate with the convalescents, and by withholding certain indulgences he had been accustomed to enjoy. As madmen frequently entertain very high, and even romantic notions of honour, they are rendered much more tractable by wounding their pride, than by severity of discipline. Speaking of the effects of management on a very extensive scale, I can truly declare, that by gentleness of manner, and kindness of treatment, I have never failed to obtain the confidence, and conciliate the esteem of insane persons, and have succeeded by these means in procuring from them respect and obedience. There are certainly some patients who are not to be trusted, and in whom malevolence forms the prominent feature of their character: such persons should always be kept under a certain restraint, but this is not incompatible with kindness and humanity. Considering how much we are the creatures of habit, it might naturally be hoped, and experience justifies the expectation, that madmen might be benefited by bringing their actions into a system of regularity. It might be supposed, that as thought precedes action, that whenever the ideas are incoherent, the actions will also be irregular. Most probably they would be so if uncontrouled; but custom, confirmed into habit, destroys this natural propensity, and renders them correct in their behaviour, though they still remain equally depraved in their intellects. We have a number of patients in Bethlem Hospital whose ideas are in the most disordered state, who yet act, upon ordinary occasions, with great steadiness and propriety, and are capable of being trusted to a considerable extent. A fact of such importance in the history of the human mind, might lead us to hope, that by superinducing different habits of thinking, the irregular associations may be corrected.