[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—The letter from Sir
Robert Armstrong-Jones in the last issue of The Spectator is most interesting. No doubt after twenty years' study of insanity, Sir Robert could tell a sane person from an insane person, but I should be pleased to hear his definition of " insanity."
Although there may be no record of a single case of the 23,000 patients being improperly or illegally certified, surely this is only because the victims of the lunacy, administration have not been given an adequate opportunity in the courts
to prove that they were of sound mind, at the time that they were removed to their place of incarceration.
The nurses in same private asylums are most certainly meanly fed, underpaid, and most of them have had no training whatsoever. The consumptives are
mixed with the non-consumptives, cases with volun- tary boarders, who are seeking a " quiet rest " and a place where they can let off a little steam, without disturbing their friends, also well-to-do private patients are mixed with and even bath in the same bathroom, and at the same time with pauper patients,-who under the Lunacy Acts have to form a certain proportion of the patients in private lunatic asylums.
Owing to the public's complete ignorance of the causes of lunacy, insanity, and temporary mental derangement, it is very easy for the asylum doctors to deceive the wife, husband or friend of a mental patient in detention, and to advise them that for the patients' own good it is necessary to have him or her put under " certificates of insanity." While it is com- paratively easy to get free from certificates of insanity under the various sections of the Lunacy Acts of 1890, it is far more difficult for a patient once more to get control of his property, personal documents and accounts, &c.; in other Words the British Government puts every difficulty in the way of the patient's resumption of normal life. It would he interesting to know if a person who has been cured of insanity and discharged with the authority of the medical profession and the law, is in fact, saner than a person who has not been cured of insanity.—I am, Sir, your obedient servant, REGIS:LIM G. MASON.
5 Princes Gate Court, London, S.W. 7.
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