Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/656

All alienists are now agreed that occupation, no matter what form it may assume, is one of the most important measures in the treatment of the insane; and, if the school does nothing more, it fills out a portion of the day, relieves to some extent the tedium of asylum life, and turns for a time at least the patient's morbid thoughts into healthier channels. Pascal says: "Whence comes it that this man who has lately buried his only son, and who this morning was so full of lamentation, at present seems to have forgotten all? Be not surprised," he replies; "he is altogether taken up with looking which way the stag will turn which his hounds have been pursuing so hotly for the past six hours. He needs no more. However full of sadness a man may be, he is happy for the time if you can only get him to enter into some diversion."

The same writer also says, "Without diversion no joy, with diversion no sorrow"; and if this be a truth applicable to the sane, who will doubt that it applies with equal force to those of unsound mind?

The treatment pursued in cases of bodily disease has been not inaptly used to illustrate this system. To deprive the stomach altogether of food in case of trouble in that organ would be fatal; instead, by administering suitable foods, varied, simple, and in limited quantities, we may overcome the disease and bring about a healthy condition; so, too, in disease of the brain, if intellectual food be given in suitable quantity and form, why should we not expect equally good results?

While I would not exaggerate the importance of this system, my experience leads me to believe that much is to be expected from its conscientious and persistent use, and I would fain hope that the time is not far distant when, in every well-organized hospital for the insane, a school will be considered one of the essential features in "ministering to the mind diseased."

 

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Some novel instances of intelligence and human-like traits in animals have recently come under our notice. A terrier dog at Yverdon, Switzerland, pays regular visits at Lausanne, going over and returning by train, and always getting out at the right stations. A cat at Montreux, which can open doors, heard another cat outside mewing to get in. No one answering the request, it rose from the chair on which it was sleeping, walked across the room to the door, opened it, and let its friend in. A tow-horse on a Boston street car, when his turn to work is about to come, quietly drops back behind his fellows, so as to be last in the line and evade the work he was to do. A horse, stabled with his mate and a third horse, stole hay from the stranger to give to his mate, while he was contented with the ration that had been allotted him; and a horse in a team, nibbling some rich grass on his side, gave at intervals mouthfuls of it to his companion, which could not reach it.