The Committee on Public Lands to whom was referred the bill making a grant of public lands for the benefit of the indigent insane in the several States, report:

That they have had the same under consideration, and they propose an amendment, in the form of a substitute for the whole, in which they ask the concurrence of the Senate, and when so amended they recommend the passage of the bill.

The committee adopt the report of the Select Committee of the House of Representatives in 1850, upon the subject matter of this bill, and embracing the memorial of Miss D. L. Dix.

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, AUGUST 8, 1850.

The Select Committee to whom was referred the memorial of Miss D. L. Dix, praying for an appropriation of land for the relief of the insane, beg leave to report:

That a careful consideration of the subject committed to them has resulted in their conviction that the prayer of the memoralist ought to be granted.

The amelioration of the condition of the insane, that neglected and unfortunate class of our citizens, should be regarded as an object of the highest national concernment; and, in the opinion of your committee, there is no other mode than that suggested by the memoralist, by which Congress, within the clear limits of its constitutional power, can so properly and successfully contribute to that desideratum.

But the memorial itself sets forth so ably and conclusively the main reasons which the committee would urge for its favorable consideration by the House, that they deem an elaborate report from themselves as wholly superfluous. They adopt unanimously, and with great satisfaction, that memorial as their own report, and bespeak for it the attentive consideration to which its merits so justly entitle it. Nor is the memorial in any degree lessened in its importance by a consideration of the source whence it comes. The memoralist, a lady, impelled by the purest and

noblest impulses, has devoted many wearisome years, the best portion of her life, to the amelioration of the condition of our insane-bringing to her task, talents and abilities of the highest order, such as would have secured her distinction and fame in any vocation in life. Wending her way into every State in the Union, and over almost every portion of each State, she has, with the devotedness of her sex, and with the firmness of purpose characteristic of the sternest of our own, sought out the condition, and in many cases the minute history, of more than 23,000 insane persons, seven-eighths of whom are entirely destitute of those advantages of situation and remedial treatment indispensible to the restoration of their reason. And she has embodied a mass of observations and facts concerning them which attest alike her laborious zeal, her keen discrimination, and philosophic mind; while they supply to us, and to the country, information of the highest utility and value. The result of her labors is in the memorial now before the House, and which is made a part of this report.

The committee propose for adoption the following resolution:

Resolved, That five thousand copies of the memorial of Miss D. L. Dix be printed for the use of the House.

And the committee report and recommend the passage of the accompanying bill.

MEMORIAL OF MISS D. L. DIX.

To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States in Congress assembled.

Your memoralist respectfully asks permission to lay before you what seem to be just and urgent claims in behalf of a numerous and increasing class of sufferers in the United States. I refer to the great and inadequately relieved distresses of the insane throughout the country.

Upon the subject which this memorial embraces, many to whose justice and humanity it appeals are well-informed; but the attention of most of those to whom it is addressed has not been called to the subject, and a few, but a very few, have looked upon some features of this sad picture as they are revealed in private dwellings, in poor-houses, and in prisons.

Your memoralist hopes to place before you substantial reasons which shall engage your earnest attention and secure favorable action upon the important subject she advocates.

It is a fact, not less certainly substantiated than it is deplorable, that insanity has increased in an advanced ratio with the fast increasing population in all the United States. For example, according to the best received methods of estimate five years since, it was thought correct to count one insane in every thousand inhabitants throughout the Union. At the present, my own careful investigations are sustained by the judgment and the information of the most intelligent superintendents of hospitals for the insane, in rendering the estimates not less than one insane person in every eight hundred inhabitants at large throughout the United States.

There are, in proportion to numbers, more insane in cities than in large towns, and more insane in villages than among the same number of inhabitants dwelling in scattered settlements.

Wherever the intellect is most excited, and health lowest, there is an increase of insanity. This malady prevails most widely, and illustrates its presence most commonly in mania, in those countries whose citizenspossess the largest civil and religious liberty; where, in effect, every individual, however obscure, is free to enter upon the race for the highest honors and most exalted stations; where the arena of competition is accessible to all who seek the distinctions which the acquisition and possession of wealth assures, and the respect accorded to high literary and scholastic attainments. Statesmen, politicians, and merchants are peculiarly liable to insanity. In the United States, therefore, we behold an illustration of my assertion. The kingdoms of Western Europe, excepting Portugal, Spain, and the lesser islands dependent on Great Britain, rank next to this country in the rapid development of maniacal insanity. Sir Andrew Halliday, in a letter to Lord Seymour, states that the number of the insane in England has become more than tripled in the last twenty years. Russia in Europe, Turkey, and Hungary, together with most of the Asiatic and African countries, exhibit comparatively but little insanity. The same is remarked by travellers, especially by Humboldt, of a large part of South America. Those tracts of North America inhabited by Indians, and the sections chiefly occupied by the negro race, produce comparatively very few examples. The colored population is more liable to attacks of insanity than the negro.*

This terrible malady, the source of indescribable miseries, does increase, and must continue fearfully to increase, in this country, whose free, civil, and religious institutions create constantly various and multiplying sources of mental excitement. Comparatively but little care is given in cultivating the moral affections in proportion with the intellectual development of the people. Here, as in other countries, forcible examples may be cited to show the mischiefs which result alike from religious, civil, and revolutionary excitements. The Millerite delusions prepared large numbers for our hospitals; so, also, the great conflagrations in New-York, the Irish riots and firemen's mobs in Philadelphia; and the last Presidential election throughout the country levied heavily on the mental health of its citizens.

The Ethiopian American, habitually gay, lounging, and contented, is, as a general rule, constitutionally free from the solicitude, and anxiety for the future, which is so marked a characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon, the Celtic, and the Germanic races.

NOTE. I wish to mark carefully the distinction between true religion and extravagant religious excitements. The one is the basis of every virtue, the source of every consolation under the trials and afflictions which beset the path of every one in the course of this mortal pilgrimage; while that morbid state which is created by want of calm, earnest meditation and self-discipline, by excessive demands upon the physical strength, by protracted attendance upon excited public assemblies, is ever to be deprecated. The following statistics show how large a part of the patients, in some of our best hospitals, labor under what is commonly termed religious insanity. I offer a pretty full list from the report, for 1843, of the Massachusetts State Hospital, for the sake of comparison: number of years not recorded:

Abroad, discontents in Scotland, civil and religious; agitations in Wales, social and civil; wide-spread disturbances in the manufacturing and agricultural districts of England; tumultuous and riotous gatherings in Ireland—all have left abiding evidence of their mischievous influence upon the records of every hospital for the insane. France, too, unfolds a melancholy page of hospital history. Subsequent to the bloody revo lution which marked the close of the eighteenth century, the hospitals for the insane were thronged, showing that where the effect of exalted

Dr. Woodward remarks, that "the coincidence of this table with the records of other institutions shows, conclusively, that if we have failed in ascertaining causes, we have fallen into a common error.

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Seven consecutive and valuable reports by Dr. Kirkbride, exhibit the following results in the Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane. This is not, like the first referred to, a State institution, but has a class of patients from adjacent States, as well as its own State's insane. It will be kept in mind, also, that more than 350 insane patients are in the Blockley almshouse in the vicinity, of which no note is here made.

In 1841-'42, admissions 299; of which 238 were residents of Pennsylvania, viz:

In 1842-'43, of 439 cases, there were, from religious excitement, 12 men, 9 women-total 21. In 1843-'44, of 592 cases, religious excitement produced of men 17, of women 11total 28. In 1844-'45, in 769 cases, religious excitement in men 19, in women 16-total 35. In 1846, of 936 cases, of men were, through religious excitement, 22; of women, 20-total 42. In 1847, of 1,196 cases recorded, 26 men, 24 women-total 50; through religious excitement.

Dr. Brigham's first annual report upon the New York State Hospital shows, of 276 cases within the first year, there were, through religious excitement, of men 29, of women 21total 50; besides 5 men and 2 women (total 7) insane through "Millerism."

Of 408 patients in 1842, 57 became insane through ill health, 32 through intemperance, 54 through religious anxiety, 50 through trouble and disappointment, and 55 through various

minor causes.

Of 179 cases received at Bloomingdale in 1842, 19 were from intemperance, 15 various causes, 15 puerperal, 14 religious excitement, 14 love, 13 trouble.

Of 122 cases received in 1842 at Staunton, Va., 33 were ill health, 20 intemperance, 14 religious anxiety, 12 domestic afflictions, 10 pecuniary troubles.

Of 1,247 patients received at the Hartford Retreat, 103 became insane through intemperance, 178 through ill health, 110 through religious anxiety, 65 through trouble and disappointment, 46 puerperal.

Irreligion, and the abuse of religion, are frequently the cause of insanity and suicide. Pure religion, more than any other power, tends to arrest and assists to cure insanity. Of this fact there is constant evidence and illustration abroad in society, and within the limits of every well organized asylum.

mental excitement failed to produce insanity in the parents, it was developed in the children, and children's children—a fearful legacy, and sure!

The political disturbances which convulsed Canada, several years since, were followed by like results.

In law, idiots are ranked with the insane. I have remarked, throughout our country, several prevailing causes of organic idiocy; of these the most common, and the most surely traced, is intemperance of parents, and the marriage and intermarriage of near relatives and kindred. Abounding examples exist on every side throughout the land.

In calculating the statistics of mental aberration, from the best authorities, it is found impossible to arrive at exactly correct results; approximation to facts is all that can be attained.

There is less maniacal insanity in the southern than in the northern States, for which disparity various causes may be assigned. Two leading causes, obvious to every mind, is the much larger amount of negro population, and the much less influx of foreigners, in the former than in the latter. While the tide of immigration sets towards the north Atlantic States with almost overwhelming force, one cannot witness the fact and not note its sequence.

Our hospitals for the insane are already receiving a vast population of uneducated foreigners; and most of these, who become the subjects of insanity, present the most difficult and hopeless, because the least curable cases. Take for example the following records, which are gathered from the city hospitals for the insane poor, passing by for the present all the State and general hospitals.

In 1846, the Boston City Hospital for the insane poor received 169 patients; 90 of which were foreigners, 35 natives of other States, and 44 alone residents of the city. Of the 90 foreigners, 70 were Irish. The New York City Hospital for the insane poor on Blackwell's island, which went into operation in 1839, had, in the autumn of 1843, about 300 patients. Of 284 admitted the following year, 176 were foreigners, viz: 112 Irish, 21 English, 27 Germans; and besides these were 38 natives of New York. On the first of January, 1846, there were in the institution 356 patients; of whom 226 were foreigners. In January, 1847, there were 410 insane patients, 328 of whom were foreigners. The cost to the city of supporting this institution, in 1846, was $24,

179 67.

In the Philadelphia Poorhouse Hospital, at Blockley, there were received in one year 395 insane patients; at the present time there are actually resident there 350 idiots, epileptics, and insane. At the Baltimore city almshouse, there are at the present time more than 85 individuals in various stages of insanity, the whole number of inmates reported being 1,726; of whom 873 are Americans, and 853 Europeans. In the Charity Hospital at New Orleans, in 1845-'46, were above 73 insane; in 1847-'48 there were above 80, chiefly foreigners, and presenting mostly chronic cases. The whole number of patients received at this institution the past year was 8,044; of these, 1,773 were Americans by birth, 6,150 were foreigners, and 121 were not recorded.

The report of the Commercial Hospital at Cincinnati shows, for 1844'45; that of 1,579 patients, 85 were insane and idiotic. The report of