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The difficulties which will perhaps at once suggest themselves, that patients in this proximity to each other would prevent sleep or otherwise annoy each other, were not found to exist in practice, the care taken in selecting subjects, and in means for a pure air and thorough inspection, appeared to overcome any trouble from such sources. I was further informed that it was deemed a great privation to sleep in a solitary room by those who had been inmates of the associated dormitory; that suicidal cases were much more easily and safely managed; that the presence of others had a happy effect in curbing and controlling those propensities to maniacal habits, tearing clothes, breaking glass, filthiness, and especially masturbation, which it is well known patients often govern during the day, when others are about them, but give an unrestrained vent to during the solitary hours of the night. It was also represented as peculiarly favorable to the timid and apprehensive, who were quiet and contented when in society, but sleepless and wretched when left alone in darkness and solitude.

The greater facility of a perfect ventilation in those large dormitories, as compared with small cells, was obvious, and under the modern or exhaustive system of ventilation, hereafter to be described, I believe it practicable to maintain a pure atmosphere with any number of sleepers.

I am able to see nothing in the social habits or customs of the English, which would render any conclusions drawn from their experience inapplicable with us.

The entire experience of these institutions, corroborated by a trial of a year's duration at the McLean Asylum, commenced from necessity not choice, have convinced me that it is the true system, when carried to a proper extent, and that one-half of the patients may be as well or better provided for in associated dormitories, well arranged as to light, inspection and ventilation, as in any other way

The next great improvement in the recent institutions is in the heating and ventilation. The original mode of heating was by common fire-grates, protected by a frame and net work, and locked. In fact, this mode is still collaterally used in day rooms, patients' rooms paying high prices, &c. in many of the English Asylums, not as I was informed, from any inadequacy in the other heating means, but from the idea that it is essential to an Englishman's comfort, that he should be able to see the fire.

The hot-air furnace was next universally introduced, under some of its thousand modifications, none of which met certain great and obvious objections, which render its employment inexpedient where an atmosphere of a high hygienic quality is as essential, as it is in an insane asylum.

It is a method at the present time universally in use with us, and as universally abandoned in Great Britain, in this class of institutions. I did not meet with it, in my visit, although it had just been superseded at several places by more approved methods.

When the flues for the admission and egress of air are very large, so that the hot air, when thrown into the rooms, is not much above the boiling point, the cockle or iron cover, so extensive as to be far removed from contact with the flame, and the apartments to be warmed, are directly above the furnace, its performance is tolerably satisfactory. It is however very difficult to obtain even this moderately satisfactory result; the air is in part scorched by contact with hot iron, a circumstance, whether to be explained or not on chemical theory, attended with a most decididly -sic- prejudicial effect upon the health and feelings of perhaps a majority of those in health; the hot-air, if delivered by flues near the floor is liable to be contaminated by patients spitting into the register, or placing their feet against it, so that the whole air admitted is thus rendered offensive; a more mischievous or demented class will subject the flue to more offensive annoyances or injure themselves by placing their backs or heads against its outlet. If on the other hand, the register opens high enough to avoid these difficulties it will be found that the hot-air will be not well disseminated, that the hotest -sic- portion will constitute a stratum next the ceiling, while that at the floor will be sour and carbonic.

It is undoubtedly these and other objections which have occasioned the entire abandonment of the modes of heating by bringing air in contact with heated metal at a high temperature. My own experience with, and observation of, this mode of heating asylums in our climate, leave no doubts on my mind, that it will be a happy day for our institutions, when the last piece of the thousand inventions and improvements for keeping air in contact with hot iron shall be turned into the old junk shop.

Whoever has experienced the pure, bracing, tropical breeze of tepid air flowing in general diffusion over a building warmed by steam or hot water, and changed by a reliable process of ventilation, will be scarcely satisfied with any atmosphere he will find in our institutions, which nevertheless may be called pure, and is so perhaps, as far as the mere olfactories are concerned. Indeed, it has been scarcely my luck to find in any building for any purpose, a hot-air furnace which does not occasionally deliver more or less impalpable dust and ashes, or smoke, as well as the empyreumatic odor of burnt particles.