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 unlikely that under new surroundings and appropriate treatment the passive subject will soon be restored to the normal state. But even admitting that under ordinary circumstances the danger of communicating insanity from the insane to the sane is slight, I shall think that this paper has fulfilled its purpose if it does aught to encourage the early treatment of the insane in hospitals especially designed for the care of such cases. Only those who are familiar with the fact appreciate the danger from delayed treatment, and realize how the chances for recovery diminish as the months pass by without hospital aid. From a careful analysis of the cases with which I have had to do during the last decade, the incontrovertible fact is shown that from six to eight persons recover when placed under treatment within the first three months from the beginning of the attack, where only one recovers when hospital treatment is delayed a year. This fact alone suggests in no uncertain tone the early removal of the patient from the influence of home and friends, even though "communicated insanity" should be considered merely a figment of the alienist's brain.



ARDNER VANUXEM was born in Philadelphia, July 23, 1792, and died at his home near Bristol, Pa., January 25, 1848. His father was James Vanuxem, a shipping merchant of Philadelphia, formerly of Dunkirk, France—a man eminent in business and highly esteemed as a citizen and in social and domestic life. His name was originally written Van Uxem; the form was changed by him partly for convenience in writing, but largely because he had become a great admirer of his adopted country and wished to remove the foreign stamp from his cognomen. James Vanuxem's wife, Rebecca, was a daughter of Colonel Elijah Clark, of New Jersey. Of their fifteen children Lardner was the eighth. Seven of these lived to long past middle life, and two of them to ninety and over. His maternal grandmother's name was Lardner.

Of the early educational course of the subject of this sketch there is no record, and no one living has any knowledge. It is thought that he was for a time a student in the Pennsylvania University, but this can not be verified. He entered his father's counting-house as a young man, but business proved very distasteful to him, his mind having been drawn previously to the cultivation of chemistry and mineralogy. He soon determined to give up all connection with business and devote himself to science. Accordingly, his father gave him the advantage of a three 