GEORGE L. HARRISON, LL.D.,

LATE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF PUBLIC CHARITIES OF PENNSYLVANIA.

PRIVATELY PRINTED.

PHILADELPHIA:
1884,

TAUB RA 1151 +132

PRESS OF

GLOBE PRINTING HOUSE,
PHILADELPHIA.

APPENDIX.-Report of the Governor Hoyt Lunacy Commission of Pennsyl-
vania, with proposed Act of Assembly

1095

NOTE.-Brackets in the text denote: 1. A conjectural emendation. 2. An

amendment to the original section. Punctuation is in every case that of the work

cited. Spelling and use of capital letters have been made uniform. The tables

of contents have been made without reference to the marginal notes, which are

those of the various statutes. In the tables the words "asylum,'

""insane" and

"indigent insane" have been uniformly used. The word "ibid" has been omitted
in the citations when the paragraphs have been taken from a revised statute or
code whose sections are numbered consecutively. Where a chapter is cited without
a date it refers to a revised statute or code already cited. When a date appears
it is cited from the pamphlet laws. The laws of England are exceptions to this.

LEGISLATION ON INSANITY.

PREFACE.

INSANITY is the saddest and most terrible of all diseases,— the most pitiable and helpless of all the states and forms of human helplessness. And yet it is a condition to which all men are liable, and into which any man may at any time fall with or without premonition. Not only does it provoke the compassion of the philanthropist, but it appeals to and it tasks the highest medical skill; it demands and exhausts all the resources of legislative wisdom. In its relation to crime it presents one of the darkest and most mysterious problems of medical and criminal jurisprudence. In connexion with the poor and friendless, it imperatively calls upon the State for care and protection. But so complex and intricate is the subject in its various relations and aspects, it is no wonder that in regard to it the legislation of many States is very crude and defective, and of all States, as yet, more or less tentative and imperfect.

During my term of service upon the Board of Public Charities of Pennsylvania, mainly as its President, I had ample opportunities of observing the condition of the inmates of Hospitals and Asylums for the Insane, in this and other States, as well as that of all the other defective classes of the commonwealth, in their respective Institutions; and since my withdrawal from that office, I have had favorable opportunities in Great Britain and on the Continent of Europe, to indulge the interest which I felt in the subject, and to study it further by a comparison of the several methods of administering these various charities. Some of these questions were discussed in a volume which I printed (privately) in 1877,