Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/655

Rh The school is divided into three sections—advanced, intermediate, and primary. The advanced course consists of geography and historical reading, and is in charge of one of the patients. In the intermediate division, arithmetic as far as percentage, reading, geography, and grammar are taught; it is in charge of two other patients. The primary division, contrary to the general rule, is in charge of the schoolmistress, and the pupils are taught to read, spell, write numbers, and do easy sums. No two in this division are equally advanced, and its successful working requires a large amount of tact and exhaustless patience. At first this department was in charge of the patients, but experience has shown that the pupils get along much better under the more experienced instruction of the head of the school. The pupils range in age from fourteen to seventy-seven. Preference, however, is given to the younger ones who desire to attend, more than half being under forty, nearly one third under thirty, and about one eighth under twenty years of age. They suffer from the various forms of mental trouble, but here again preference is given to those who have melancholia and the more acute forms of insanity. Chronic cases are not excluded, however, and among those who can receive no benefit save the two hours' daily relief from the monotony of asylum life are two Virgin Marys, one queen of the world, one daughter of ex-President Cleveland who is nearly seventy years of age, two who imagine that they have passed from the scenes of earth and dwell among the dead, and one who has the curious delusion that people are constantly walking upon her fingers. As curable cases, and those most likely to recover, are the ones who generally attend the school, the direct curative influences can not be accurately estimated; but, as might be expected, the most encouraging results are met with in the young and in those whose insanity has been of comparatively short duration. I can recall two cases where the patient could not read or write before becoming insane, but became fairly proficient in both before returning home. Three others also occur to me who appeared to be in the depths of dementia, but were, after several days of patient trial, made to feel an interest in a "puzzle map," and each went on uninterruptedly to recovery and home. Another patient is the terror of the ward, in which she stays until ten o'clock in the morning, when she goes quietly to school and remains for two hours one of the most interested of them all. After leaving the school she again becomes ugly and irritable, and it is only the fear of being kept away from it that makes her at all controllable. Surely these scattered instances show results sufficient to justify the efforts made; but I am sure that, even where the results are not so marked, the school is at least an important adjunct to employment, games, out-of-door exercise, and amusements.