The first hospital asylum in all Syria for the humane and scientific treatment of the insane was founded a few years ago and first opened to patients August 9, 1900. It is just a short drive out of Beirut, at a place called ‛Aṣfûrîyeh, within the Lebanon government district. Its founders are Mr. and Mrs. Theophilus Waldemeier. Mr. Waldemeier was for over twenty years the superintendent of the English Friends’ Mission at Brummana and other stations in Mount Lebanon. Advancing years seemed to make it wisest that he should relinquish the many-sided mission work. With his wife he planned a world tour in the interests of a work which he had thought over for many years. While friends were advising and expecting him to take a deserved rest he began to plan for this new enterprise, which he sweetly calls his “evening sacrifice”; a hospital for the right treatment of the insane, of which the country has many. The Waldemeiers visited successfully in Europe and America and returned with funds to build. They found a fine property of over thirty acres belonging to one of the _effendîyeh_ class of natives, a Moslem who was in need of funds and good enough not to make too hard terms with these philanthropists. In the first two years the institution treated two hundred twenty-seven patients and sent away thirty-six patients recovered. Mr. Waldemeier and his gifted wife treated us with the greatest cordiality, when we called on them, and showed us detail after detail of the work, the new building and so on, just as if they were enthusiastic devotees of an interesting new game; and so they are devotees of the old, the ever new game, of doing good. A large, well-equipped administration building, another for women patients and still another one for men were already up and fully used, forty patients at a time being the capacity. A new building was being erected to be used for the most violent cases. The story of some cases is a sad one. A surgeon of the Egyptian army was with us as we inspected the wards where the women patients are kept, filled mostly with young girls. He said, “I never saw anything so sad. The wounded and the dying on the battle-field do not make me feel like this.” The causes of the troubles of these sufferers are various. Ten distinct kinds of mania are recorded on the books, among them cases resulting from alcoholic excess, from typhoid fever and those that are hereditary. No patients are received unless there is reasonable expectation of their recovery under treatment.