SECLU'SION (oF Tim INSANE). This term has recently been narrowed so as to apply to the removal of the violent insane from the ordinary wards and fellowship of an asylum to an airing court, gallery, or room so situate and furnished that its solitary occupant can neither injure himself, nor injure nor disturb others. Since the abolition of physical restraint by chains and strait-jackets seclusion has become a favored and useful mode of repression and treatment. That it should be resorted to exclusively as a remedial agent, and by the medical attendant, are now received as axioms. In the commis sioners in lunacy in England ascertained, by circular, the opinionS of almost all those entrusted with Che care of the insane in that country, as to the employment of such means of cure, r ben it appeared that it was generally considered beneficial, if-used for short periods. and during paroxysms of epileptic and violent mania. Even when not absolutely required for the tranquillization of the individual, seclusion may become expe dient in order to secure the quiet, comfort, or safety of the patients with whom he is associated. That such an instrument may be abused and adopted from the parsimony,
timidity, or ignorance of those around, One of the lunatics liberated by Pine] in 1792 had been incarcerated or secluded in his dark cell for forty years; and occasionally even now the duration of the isolation may be unduly prolonged even under medical sanction; but The instances of and cruel seclusion in garrets and cellars. and outhouses, are e?-f.= chiefly to be found in private families, and where, as in the "Flushing case," tao tcv-er course is known to be practicable.—.Eighth Report of Commis sioners in Lunacy to Lord Chancellor,App. C, p. 123; Bneknill and Tuke. Psychological Medicine, p. 562; Browne, What Asylums Were, Are, and Ought to be, p. 137.