GHEEL, a well-known colony for the insane, is a town in Belgium, in the province of Antwerp, and 26 m. e.s.e. of the town of that name. It is literally an oasis in a desert; a comparatively fertile spot, inhabited and cultivated by 10,000 or 11,000 peasants, in the midst of an extensive sandy waste, called the Campine, where neither climate, soil, nor surroundings invite a settlement. There are no gentlemen's seats in the district, and the farmhouses, though neat, and generally surrounded by trees and a garden, are evidently in the hands of the poor. Their frequency shows this. They are sometimes built of brick; much more generally, they are constructed of wattled or wicker work, thickly laid over with mud or plaster, and whitewashed. A Gheel crofter's house is much larger than the dwelling of a small farmer in Scotland. The people inhabiting these seem to be about the rank of English cottagers, but are inferior in aspect, tone of character, and cleanliness of habits. The dwellings are arranged into three classes, or cordons: those of the- village proper; those scattered around in its immediate vicinity: and those collected into hamlets in the more distant and least reclaimed portions of the commune, which may be about 20 miles in circumference.
Historically considered, Gheel is noticed as having been the spot where a woman of rank, said to have been of British origin, was murdered by her father, in consequence of her resistance to his incestuous passion. The pagan in his revenge gave the church a martyr. Pilgrims, the sick, the sorrowful, and the insane, visited the tomb of the Christian virgin; the last were restored to sanity and serenity. Dymphna became the tutelar saint of those stricken in spirit; a shrine rose in her honor, which now, for ten centuries, has been consecrated to the relief of mental disease, is said to have been distinguished by never-failing success, and, at all events, has collected around it hun dreds of lunatics, chiefly of the poorer classes, but laboring under every form and stage of nervous malady. Formerly, besides the benefit derivable from proximity to the ashes of the saint, and from the prayers of the church, the afflicted underwent a sort of novitiate in a building adjoining the church, where they were chained to the wall, and subsequently passed under the mausoleum of their patron, etc., but now, although faith
lingers, there do not appear to be any other than the ordinary ministrations of the church to which the patients belong, resorted to as treatment.
About 1300 insane persons are lodged with the citizens of this community, or with 1000 heads of families, and are controlled and employed by them, and this without recourse to walls or ha-has, or other asylum appliances, and with little coercion of any kind. The quiet and industrious reside generally one in each family in the town, the more excited in the suburban cottages, and the most unmanageable with the laborers on the confines of the commune. The effect produced by this large body of lunatics wandering, working, displaying many of their peculiarities in the midst of a thriving sane population, who chiefly depend upon a traffic in insanity, is both striking and picturesque. In the enjoyment of comparative liberty, and of what is called the free air treatment, these patients are, upon the whole, contented, tranquil, and healthy. Violence is rare; only two suicides have occurred in four years; and morality is less outraged than in more protected classes. Each individual is maintained for about 6W, to lid. per diem. Until recently, this colony was merely a psychological curiosity: recently, the anomaly and absurdity of treating all cases alike, and independently of medical aid, have led to the institution of a medical staff, the erection of an hospital, and the introduction of many salutary alterations in the relations between the insane and their custodiers, in classification and supervision. The compatability of the seclusion of the insane with greater freedom, with domestic life, and association with the sane, have suggested the introduction of cottage asylums, as a modification in the accommo dation of this class in this country. See Gheel, by Jules Duval (1860); Die Irrencolonien, by Brandes (1165); Gheel, by Rudy (Bern, 1874).