LUNAR CAUSTIC.

special order of the lord chancellor for the purpose; and the provisions for insuring through the visitors and masters the proper care and treatment of the lunatic are made more comprehensive.

The following Acts contain amendments:-25 & 26 Vict. c. 86 (which provides that every lunatic shall be visited by the proper officers at least four times a year), and the 26 & 27 Vict. c. 110. The chief amendments comprised in the last Act are-That the inquiry as to the state of mind shall be confined to the question whether the person is at the time of inquiry of sound mind, and no evidence as to anything done or said by such person, or as to his demeanour more than two years before the time of inquiry, shall be received as evidence of insanity. The lord chancellor is given power to apply in certain cases the property of a lunatic for such lunatic's benefit.

The law of Scotland recognizes two distinct kinds of mental incapacity-fatuity or idiocy, and furiosity or insanity. Persons labouring under mental disease in either form are protected by law, both as regards their persons and estates. But the amount and nature of the protection accorded to them varies, according as their incapacity is total and permanent, or partial and intermittent.

Plea of Insanity in Criminal Cases.-In criminal cases insanity may be pleaded either in bar of punishment or in bar of trial. The old test of insanity—that the panel did not know the distinction between right and wrong-is now completely exploded. Wherever there is clear proof of the existence of mental disease clouding and dethroning the mind, the defence of insanity will be admitted.

By the Roman law persons of unsound mind might be deprived of the management of their property and persons on application to the prætor by their next of kin. This regulation dates back to the time of the Twelve Tables. The curatory was given to the nearest cognate of the lunatic, and when there were none, the prætor or the præses in the provinces named one. (Dig. 27, 10, 1.) An insane person could not make a will or exercise any other civil right so long as his malady lasted. When it ceased the curatory fell at once. By the code of the Twelve Tables prodigals were placed under the same restraints as lunatics with regard to the management of their affairs. See also LUNATIC ASYLUMS.

LUNAR CAUSTIC, a term applied to the fused nitrate of silver, when produced in small cylindrical cakes. It bears a whitish-striated appearance, decomposing and turning black when exposed to the air. In surgery it is frequently employed, sometimes to cauterize warts, ulceration of the mucous membrane of the throat, and the proud flesh which grows up about wounds and ulcers. It is also sometimes used to stimulate the action of lethargic ulcers as well as in ophthalmic affections and many varieties of skin disease.

LUNAR MONTH, the time which the moon takes to complete a revolution round the earth, or about twentynine and a half days. A lunar year consists of twelve lunar months. See CALENDAR.

LUNATIC ASYLUMS. The subject of insanity and asylums for the insane has of late years occupied a very large share of public attention, particularly as an opinion has prevailed that insanity is on the increase in this kingdom beyond the ratio of population. It is, however, believed that this alleged increase has not much real foundation, but is chiefly owing to the fact that many cases not formerly so dealt with are now taken to asylums.

Two Acts passed in 1845 (8 & 9 Vict. caps. 100 and 126) placed the powers vested in the Commissioners in Lunacy on an entirely new footing, and in many respects modified the constitution of asylums. The first Act appointed six commissioners, three of whom were physicians and three barristers, with salaries; and five other com

missioners, who act gratuitously. The rule that none of

these shall be connected with any asylum was continued. Licenses to receive lunatic patients are granted by these commissioners at each of their quarterly meetings. No license is to remain in force more than thirteen months, and the notice of a wish to renew must give the number of patients then confined. The jurisdiction of the commissioners extends to the whole of London and Middlesex and Southwark, and to all places within 7 miles of London, Westminster, and Southwark. In the country the licenses are granted by the justices of the peace in quarter session, who are bound to appoint three of their number, together with one physician, surgeon, or apothecary, as visitors of the asylum licensed by them. Strict regulations are enforced for the reception of patients; it is required that every person, not being a pauper, received as insane, shail be certified to be so by two physicians or surgeons, who shall visit such patient separately, and shall have no interest in the asylum in which such patient is to be confined; and certain entries of these particulars are to be kept at each asylum. For a pauper the certificate of one medical man and the order of two justices are required. Penalties are fixed for neglecting these rules, or those which direct notice to be given of every admission, death, discharge, or escape. Houses having 100 or more patients must have a resident medical attendant, and those of smaller size must be visited by a medical attendant at define! periods, according to their size. Every house within the immediate jurisdiction of the commissioners must be visited by them at least four times a year, and every other house at least twice in every year. Similar powers are given to the visitors in the country. The commissioners have to present an annual report to the lord chancellor of the state of the different asylums visited by them, which report must be laid before Parliament. An important alteration was made in the law concerning the care of single patients. Orders and medical certificates must now be procured for the care of one patient similar to those used for the admission of patients into licensed houses; and copies of these documents must be privately sent to and registered by the secretary to the commissioners. This Act only extends to England and Wales, and it does not affect Bethlehem Hospital, London. The persons appointed to hold commissions "De Lunatico Inquirendo," previously styled Commissioners, were in future to be termed "Masters in Lunacy."

The second Act, which repealed 9 Geo. IV. c. 40, and is now itself repealed by 16 & 17 Vict. c. 97, related to the regulation of lunatic asylums for counties and boroughs, and the maintenance and care of pauper lunatics, and gave to the commissioners a greater power over these institutions. The justices of every county and borough were compelled to erect or join in the erection of an asylum when none such already existed; and all proposals, agreements, and plans, and the rules and regulations of each asylum, were to be submitted to the commissioners, and they and all contracts and estimates approved by th secretary of state. Contracts for the care of insane persons in licensed houses do not exempt any county t borough from the obligation of providing an asylum. Tis Act extends only to England and Wales, and does not apply to Bethlehem Hospital. Medical men signing fase certificates are made guilty of a misdemeanour; and certain penalties are inflicted on officers and servants ill-treating lunatics. The justices of the peace have to appoint a visiting committee, to whom everything has to be submitted. Le visitors may grant retiring allowances to the officers not exceeding two-thirds of their salaries; have to draw up res for the regulation of the asylum, the same to be sut mittesd to the secretary of state; to fix weekly rates for the tenance of each pauper lunatic; to appoint a chaplain, medical officer, clerk, and treasurer; and to audit the aecounts. Every pauper lunatic not in an asylum or licensed house must be visited by the medical officer of the unica

LUNATIC ASYLUMS.

once a quarter. The Act contained provision as to the care of lunatics wandering at large, and also the certificate Ender which an insane person is to be received into an asylum. It provided for raising the funds for the maintenance of the asylum; enacted the penalties for breaches of the Act; and contained ample directions as to the disposal of the lunatic's property.

There can be no question that on the whole these laws Lave been carried out in a satisfactory manner, but the experience gained since they were passed has revealed certain defects which urgently call for removal. On the ore hand, it has been shown that the law in its present e.ndition affords hardly sufficient protection against the incarceration of persons not really insane; and on the ether hand, the heavy responsibility incurred by medical practitioners in certifying cases of insanity has rendered them in many instances unwilling to do so except in the ast obvious and extreme cases. That the first of these dar gers is not illusory was conclusively shown by certain procedings, which attracted much attention, instituted Caring 1881-85 against several persons by an intended vrtim who had happily escaped them; but it must also be remembered that when in 1877, in consequence of a cause celebre, a parliamentary committee sat during the whole of a summer session hearing and examining medical experts, diwharged lunatics, government officials, and all those willing and able to furnish any information of interest, the result of the investigation was to show that no mala fides was proved in a single instance. The committee, however, recommended certain alterations in the existing laws, and a promise was made on the part of the government that time should be embodied in a new Act dealing with the jext. A bill was brought in by Lord-chancellor Selre in 1885, but failed to become law.

9

Management of Lunatic Asylums.-For a very long period it was unfortunately taken for granted, both in England and in other countries, that insanity was inearable, and coercion and confinement were the chief splances used in all cases where any restraint appeared When they were supposed to be harmless, lanatics and idiots were suffered to wander about the evantry, trusting to precarious charity, and subjected to ecasional whippings. The worst cases only were admitted to the asylums which were so sparingly provided, and the treatment of the inmates in these institutions was often brutal in the extreme. In the old Bethlehem Hospital thellam), for instance, the patients, chained to the wall will beasts, were shown to the public on certain days of the week at the charge of 2d. a visitor, being often excited to rage to make the exhibition more stimulating. Such scenes were not peculiar to England, but could be piraled in almost every country in Europe. At length n 1792 a benevolent Frenchman, named Pinel, made the Et systematic attempt to restore the insane to a position arang haman beings. His plan, which was designated ze-restraint system, was at first ridiculed and scoffed at: bat by dint of great perseverance and continuous terial exertions he at length induced the governors of the Bêtre, an hospital near Paris, to permit him to unen some of the inmates, and so salutary were the effects ✔s experiment, even on the first day, that the old plan Wan entirely abolished and a course of milder treatrent pursued. ́England is proverbially slow in adopting venents, and for twenty-three years after the chains wn removed from the inmates of the Bicêtre, the old de of treatment continued in full force in this country. It true that nearly simultaneously with the early measures P., and, as is believed, without any knowledge of ter, Mr. William Tuke, a Quaker, conceived the plan founding an hospital for the treatment of the insane a prnciples more enlightened and humane than those ich then prevailed; and his idea was carried out by the

LUNATIC ASYLUMS.

construction of "The Friends' Retreat" for the insane, at York, which was opened in 1796.

But it was not till the year 1813 that the English government took up the matter. In that year a committee of inquiry was appointed to investigate the state of the York Asylum-special attention having been directed to this particular institution in consequence of the success of the Friends' establishment in that city-and the horrors which were then divulged could scarcely be credited if they were not well attested by facts. The state of the patients at Bethlehem was next inquired into, and they were found to be even worse treated than those at York. From this time a gradual, but very slow, improvement in the condition of the insane may be noticed. Chains were removed and leather restraints of much milder kinds substituted, and more care was given to the warming and clothing of the patients. Between 1815 and 1830 many large asylums were opened in England. They were built on the then most approved principles, and in all of them the milder methods of treatment were adopted. Things continued to gradually improve, and in 1839 Mr. Hill, the surgeon of the Lincoln Asylum, published a work in which he advanced the following proposition as a principle:"In a properly constructed building, with a sufficient number of suitable attendants, restraint is never necessary, never justifiable, and always injurious, in all cases of lunacy whatever." The doctrine was at first declared, even by those in favour of the milder treatment, to be too decided, and likely to produce a bad effect; but fortunately the lapse of forty years has proved its perfect truth, by its adoption in all the most important asylums in the kingdom.

The views of Dr. Hill as to a system of non-restraint are not only now fully adopted, but the best authorities on the subject at the present day question even the propriety of erecting large asylums at all, arguing that such a system only condenses and aggravates the malady. At Gheel, in Belgium, there is a kind of lunatic colony, where the patients are dispersed among 600 different dwellings, under the care of nourriciers, or attendants, in whose occupations they share, and with whom they live as belonging to the family. It is here held that the true principle of cure for the unsound is the association with healthy minds. The entire colony is of course under proper government and medical supervision. The nearest resemblance we have, on any large scale, to the Belgian colony is the Scotch plan of boarding out patients, who are distributed among their friends and in licensed houses. A good example of the beneficial results of this system is to be found at North Berwick, a salubrious watering-place near Edinburgh, where numerous patients are regularly taken in groups of half a dozen or so at a time, returning, after a week or two's sojourn, invigorated and refreshed.

The treatment of insanity, as usually pursued at the present day, is divided into two parts. One of these might be termed the direct, the other the indirect, but they are generally called the medical and the moral treatment. The medical treatment consists in the use of such medicines as, in each particular case, will be likely to restore the body to a healthy condition. This treatment, as a method, has undergone a radical change within the last fifty-mostly within the last thirty-years. Formerly. based upon the hypothesis that insanity was a disease of strength, or of active inflammation, it chiefly consisted in the liberal employment of blisters, purgatives, cupping, and blood-letting. Now, founded upon the well-supported theory that the disorder originates in debility, its principal remedies are stimulants and tonics. The success of the present method demonstrates not only the excellence of the practice, but the truth of the theory.

The moral treatment includes the exercise of a mild but firm directive and disciplinary power over the actions of the

LUNATIC ASYLUMS.

patient, by which he is gradually restored to healthful habits and wholesome self-restraint, and the attempt to win him from the vagaries of his delusions to those mental and manual pursuits which give solidity, strength, and activity to the normal mind. The means adopted for the attainment of these ends are, the regular hours of hospital life, appropriate manual labour, walking, athletic and other games, attendance upon religious services, reading and other literary pursuits, lectures upon scientific and miscellaneous subjects, dramas, concerts, balls, and other recreations, entertainments, and amusements. In the method of moral treatment the change has been no less thorough than in that of the medical treatment.

Statistics of Lunacy.-At the census of 1881 the number of persons returned as suffering from some form of insanity in England and Wales was 84,503-being in the proportion of 3253 per million of the whole population, or one person of unsound mind in every 307. In 1871 the proportion was 3034 per million, or one in every 329. Of the 84,503 insane persons in 1881 the number of males was 39,789, and of females 44,714, and the proportion was one in every 318 males and one in every 298 females. In a certain sense, therefore, it is indisputably true that there is more insanity among females than among males, namely, in the sense that out of equal numbers living of each sex and at all ages there are more insane females living than insane males. But it must be clearly understood that this statement is by no means identical with another that is sometimes confounded with it, namely, that the proportion of females who are attacked by insanity is higher than the proportion of males similarly attacked. Not impossibly, nor improbably, the contrary is the case. It may very possibly be that mental disease attacks a larger proportion of males than of females, but that, owing to the enormously high death-rate of the male insane as compared with the female insane, the number of the latter living at any given moment comes to be greater than the number of the former. The male cases that occur are on this hypothesis more numerous, but are rapidly swept away by death, while the female cases, though fewer in number, live on and accumulate.

The number of lunatics in Scotland in 1881 was 8406 -the males being 3939, and the females 4467. The proportion was 2250 per million, or one in every 444 of the population. At the previous census the proportion was one in every 494 of the population. In Ireland the number was 9774 (4857 males and 4917 females), being in the proportion of one in every 529 of the population.

The French statistics of lunacy are very full and very instructive. The number of lunatic asylums in France amounts to 103, of which sixty-one are public and fortytwo private. Of those nine are exclusively for men and fourteen for women; the rest are for both sexes. A considerable increase of lunacy has been noticed in France for the last fifteen years. In 1868 the number of lunatics was 34.000; in 1885 it was nearly 60,000, of whom 28,000 were men and 32,000 women.

The total annual cost of the maintenance of pauper lunatics in the United Kingdom amounts to over £1,000,000. It was formerly defrayed entirely by the local authorities, but in 1874 Parliament agreed, in relief of local taxation, to give a subvention of 48. a week for every pauper maintained in a lunatic asylum. The effect has been to reduce the charge upon local taxes by a sum of from £380,000 to £100,000, which is now annually voted from the imperial exchequer.

Prevention.-A very interesting and instructive little volume by Dr. Andrew Wynter, entitled "The Borderlands of Insanity" (London, 1875), threw great light upon the preventibility of a large percentage of the insanity which prevails. Science, however, has hitherto discovered no medicine which acts as a specific cure for insanity, and

none which is a prophylactic or preventive of the disease. The chief power of prevention in the case of each person lies with that person himself. The man of sound judgment and prudent self-control will be "moderate in all things," avoiding those habits, practices, or excesses which exhaust or depress the vital force, allowing himself sufficient sleep to enable the brain and body fully to re-invigorate themselves from the fatigue of ordinary and wholesome labour, and living as near to nature as our multifold artificialities will permit.

In his work on 66 Responsibility in Mental Disease" (London, 1874) Dr. Maudsley maintained that insanity is as much within our power as the cause or prevention of physical ailments. There are many persons who, especially after periods of intense thought, have had the feeling that it would not be a hard matter to become insane-in fact, something of an effort was required to preserve their sanity. Hence the important question, How may a man prevent himself from going mad? The answer to this is, first, be must devote his mind to one great purpose, even though this verge into eccentricity, for eccentricity may be a vicarious relief, a sort of masked madness. Secondly, there must be strengthening of the will by constant exercise. Thirdly, he must act consistently with his belief. Religion must be as real as it is reputed to be. The slovenly habits of thought engendered by some modes of worship, and the unhealthy excitement and morbid egoism that are sometimes the result of mistaken religion, are each conducive to insanity. Alcoholic liquors should be avoided, not only as unnecessary, but as absolutely harmful. The mind should not gain, by the fictitious aid of a stimulant, the energy which should come from the calm resolution of a developed will. "Were men with one consent to give up alcohol and other excesses; were they to live temperately, soberly, and chastely, or, what is fundamentally the same thing, holilythat is, healthily-there can be no doubt that there would soon be a vast diminution in the amount of insanity in the world." Lastly, the reasoning powers must be most carefully exercised on the matter of marriage. Misplaced affection, disappointment in love, an unhappy union, are all more or less potent factors in the cause of insanity. Falling in love should not be allowed to be a mere matter of propinquity. In the breeding of farm stock or stud we know that good or bad qualities will be produced in the animals according to the selection of the pairs; but men act habitually as if the same laws were not applicable to themselves. The consequence is that those who have a tendency to insanity are not unfrequently prone to seek others having the same mental qualities. After marriage external circumstances are allowed to foster their special tendencies, and the children who are born are doubly cursed

with the inheritance of a bad descent, and in the training which they get, or rather do not get. Here, then, are causes of insanity which it is within man's power to removehereditary predisposition, by abstention from marriage or by prudent marriage; intemperance, by temperance in living; mental anxieties, by the wise cultivation of the mind, and by the formation of self-government. Similar views are enumerated in another valuable and useful work, entitled "Insanity in Ancient and Modern Life, with Chapters on its Prevention," published in 1878, by Dr. D. H. Tuke, in which the author points out how those who know that the seeds of insanity lie dormant in their constitution by hereditary descent may, for the sake of their descendants as well as themselves, check their growth and, if possible, stamp them out.

LUNDY ISLE, a rocky island in the Bristol Channel, England, 11 miles N.N.W. of Hartland Point. It is 3 miles long, north to south, by 1 mile broad, and rises in the north to the height of 800 feet, in a hill called the Constable, and is accessible only by one bay on the east side. It is composed of granite and coarse sandstone, with

LUNEBURG.

shells and plants. There is an old castle and lighthouse in the south end, and on the east side, at the south end, a smail island called Slut Island. Lundy Island was the scene of a treacherous and cruel attack upon the islanders by a French war ship towards the end of the seventeenth century. A party was landed, as from a Dutch ship, under the pretence of burying one of the crew, and the unsuspecting inhabitants were suddenly attacked and the island ravaged.

LU NEBURG, a town of Germany, in the Prussian province of Hanover, and the chief town of a province of the same name, is situated 30 miles south-east of Hamberg, on the Ilmenau, which is here navigable about 15 miks above its junction with the Elbe, and on the Hanover and Hamburg Railway. The population in 1880 was 19.034. The town was formerly surrounded with walls, hat the fortifications are now dismantled. The principal Feildings and public institutions in the town are the palace, the gymnasium, St. Michael's Church, in the vaults of which are the monuments of the ancient princes, the conreat of St. Michael, the town-hall, the arsenal, military demy for nobles, cavalry barracks, hospital, &c. The nhabitants carry on a considerable trade in the products of the country, such as linen, salt, wax, honey, woollens, en thread, flax, horses, of which 70,000 are annually traght hither to market, &c. There are very productive sat works in a part of the city which is separated from the rest by a wall, and is called the Sülze. Great quantities of lime are burned in the Kalkberg, a hill near the torn, and sent to Hamburg and Holland. There are manfactories of soap, breweries, distilleries, a paper mill, &, and a very active transit trade is carried on with Hamburg and the interior of Germany.

LUNETTE. See FORTIFICATION. LUNÉVILLE, a town in the French department of Meurthe, 180 miles east from Paris, is situated at the e-tance of the Vezouse and Meurthe. It has a tribunal of Erst instance, a college, and 14,955 inhabitants. Léoprid, duke of Lorraine, resided here, and built a palace, which was subsequently much improved by Stanislaus, exof Poland. Both these princes made great improveeats in the town, which presents wide, straight, and wellLast streets, and some handsome squares. Behind the palace is the parade ground or Champ de Mars, which covers a space of 500 acres. The other remarkable objects

Lanéville are the parish church, the immense cavalry barracks, with stabling for 6000 horses, the riding school, whah is considered the finest in France, being large enough far 200 horse soldiers to exercise in, the hospitals, Jews' synagogue, a theatre, and the Place Neuve, which is ornaested with handsome buildings. Great bodies of cavalry are frequently collected at Lunéville in the autumn for the pese of manœuvring on a large scale. The town has factures of woollen cloth, yarn, hoisery, lace, gloves, earthenware, sheet iron, and beer; it has also a good trade n wine, corn, brandy, hemp, flax, wood, &c. The origin of the town is uncertain, but its name seems to indicate that Diana was anciently worshipped here, and several Leman medals, with the impress of that divinity, have been sund near a fountain in the neighbourhood. By the treaty f peace signed at Lunéville, 9th February, 1801, the Rhine was made the limit between France and Germany.

LUNGS. The lungs are the organs of respiration. It any their means that the dark venous blood is brought into xefact with the air, so as to permit its reoxygenation. See RESPIRATION.

Each lung may be compared to a bunch of grapes. It Forsists of an infinite number of little cells, each not larger than a millet seed, fixed upon footstalks, each footstalk aring a tube, a branch of the windpipe. When the air comes in through the windpipe, then all these air-cells becurse tiled; and this is done by the heaving of the chest,

LUNGS.

which is called inspiration. When again the chest falls, the air-cells are partially emptied, but never completely, and the air which was in them is blown out by the windpipe: this is called expiration.

The larynx or windpipe is a tube (b in fig. 1 of Plate), consisting of eighteen or twenty cartilaginous rings, united by an elastic membrane; it is connected to the back of the mouth, where the air enters it; it passes down the front of the neck, enters the upper orifice of the chest behind the top of the breastbone, and divides into two branches (cc in Plate), one for the right lung and one for the left. In the lung the windpipe subdivides into a great multitude of branches, as shown in fig. 1, d. These tubes and aircells are lined with a delicate mucous membrane, and their coats become exceedingly thin, so that the air within them, and the blood without, can exercise a chemical influence on one another through them. The pulmonary artery, which brings the dark blood from the right side of the heart, divides into two branches, one for each lung, and each branch subdivides into minute ramifications, which spread themselves over and between the air-cells. The pulmonary veins take their commencement from the arterial capillaries on the surface of the cells, and unite with one another till two large ones are formed from each lung, which convey the red purified blood into the left auricle.

The vesicles have been described as being fixed to the air-tubes, in the same manner as a bunch of grapes is fixed to the footstalk; but here the similarity ends, for the cells are so small and so close together that no interstices between them can be perceived. Indeed, on looking at the surface of a lung it seems to consist of an infinity of shining points, which, on being examined more closely, are found to be the cells filled with air. After air has once got into the lungs it can never be completely expelled: hence the lungs of a person who has breathed always float in water; and on this fact is founded the test used in criminal examinations, to distinguish a stillborn child from one that has breathed, where there is a suspicion of childmurder.

In the accompanying figure the front of the chest is represented as cut off, so as to show the lungs without it. The windpipe is seen descending and dividing into its two branches, which are entering into the lungs; but the branches of the arteries and veins are omitted, because they would

have made it too complicated. Each lung is of a conical form its base below and its apex above; its base rests on the upper surface of the diaphragm, its apex reaches up into the root of the neck, its back touches the spine, and its front and outer parts are covered by the ribs (as seen in fig. 2). Towards the middle the lungs are not in contact, being there separated by the space in which the heart lies. Each lung is divided by fissures into lobes, of which the right lung has three, and the left only two; the place of the middle lobe being occupied by the heart, which, it has already been stated, though in the middle, encroaches upon the left side. The whole lung, except the part where the windpipe and blood vessels enter it, is covered by a thin smooth membrane called the pleura, which is represented