“At an epoch not far distant from our own,” says Dr. Linas in a paper on lunatic asylums in France, “demented persons were, with the exception of those who found an asylum in the monasteries, treated as vagabonds and even criminals.” The first attempts to improve the condition of the unhappy lunatic were made by Dr. Tenon, and by a member of the Constituent Assembly, M. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, in 1791. A year later Pinel, equally estimable for his philanthropic and for his scientific spirit, introduced at Bicêtre the reforms which, in common with the two excellent men before named, he had long been meditating. For the First Revolution, then, with all its mad excesses, must be claimed the honour of having introduced in modern times the humane treatment of the insane. The Revolution, indeed, opened not only a “career to talent,” but a path to very useful reform. The mad patients were now taken from the Hôtel Dieu and other hospitals to be placed at Charenton, Bicêtre, and La Salpêtrière (1802-1807). From that time these asylums, placed under the direction of eminent medical men, changed their character. The employment of force or coercion with lunacy was at an end; and the new establishments, thanks to the intelligence and zeal of Esquirol, Ferrus, and their disciples, gained the highest reputation throughout Europe. The study of mental maladies was now for the first time followed. [Illustration: FAÇADE OF THE MAIN BUILDINGS, SALPÊTRIÈRE.] It was not, however, until 1838 that Charenton became a lunatic asylum and nothing else. Bicêtre and La Salpêtrière remained hybrid institutions, half hospitals, half asylums; receptacles alike for madness and old age. The inmates of Charenton are treated with the greatest kindness. Cases of insubordination must of course be dealt with; and they are treated by the withdrawal of some favour or (less humanely, as it would seem to the lay reader) by the shower-bath. A strait-jacket, with long sewn-up sleeves, is the only means of coercion employed with violent and dangerous madmen, so as to preserve them against the excesses of their own fury and to render it impossible for them to injure their companions. The wards of the unruly patients--broad and lofty, well lighted, well ventilated, with waxed floors--present no resemblance whatever to the cages of former days.