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In Vermont, the same neglects, ignorance, and sometimes brutal severity, led to like results. Dr. Rockwell, his assistant physicians, and the whole corps of hospital nurses, bear accordant testimony to the sufferings of patients formerly brought to that institution from all parts of the State; and many even now arrive under circumstances the most revolting and shocking, subject to the roughest treatment or the most inexcusable and extreme neglects.

I have seen many of these afflicted persons, men of hardy frames and women of great capacity for endurance, bowed and wasted till almost all trace of humanity was lost in grovelling habits, and injuries through severties and privations which those cannot comprehend who have never witnessed similar cases of misery. Not many counties, if indeed any towns or parishes but have their own tales of various wo, illustrated in the miseries of the insane.

In the eighth annual report of the Vermont hospital for 1844, is the following record, which being a repetition in fact, if not almost literal expression of my own notes, I adopt in preference: "One case was brought to the hospital four and a half years ago, of a man who had been insane more than twelve years. During the four years previous to his admission he had not worn any article of clothing, and had been caged in a cellar, without feeling the influence of a fire. A nest of straw was his only bed and covering. He was so violent that his keeper thought it necessary to cause an iron ring to be riveted about his neck, so that they could hold him when they changed his bed of straw. In this miserable condition he was taken from the cellar and conveyed to the hospital. The ring was at once removed from his neck. He has worn clothing, has been furnished with a comfortable bed, and has come to the table, using a knife and fork ever since he was admitted. He is most of the time pleasantly and usefully employed about the institution." Another man, insane for twenty-four years, for the last six years had worn no clothing, and had been furnished with no bed except loose straw. He had become regardless of everything that was decent. In less than three months after his admission, he so improved that he wore clothing constantly, kept his bed and room neat, and worked on the farm daily.

"Another man, insane more than thirty years, was sold to the lowest bidder. For many years he was caged, and had his feet frozen so that he lost his toes, and endured cruel sufferings which no person in a natural state could have supported. He was five months in the hospital, wore his clothing, was furnished with a comfortable bed, and sat at table with other patients. He was a printer by trade, and for a long time employed himself in setting up type for the newspaper printed at this institution."

"Another patient, a woman 61 years of age, was taken to the hospital. She had been confined for several years in a half subterranean cage, &c., which was nothing other than a cave excavated in the side of a hill near the house, and straw thrown in for a bed; no warmth was admitted save what the changing seasons supplied. Her condition in all respects was neglected and horrible in the extreme."

Examples here, as in every State of the Union, might be multiplied of the insane caged and chained, confined in garrets, cellars, corn-houses, and other out-buildings, until their extremities were seized by the frost, and their sufferings augmented by extreme torturing pain.

In all the States, where the cold of winter is sufficient to cause freezing of the human frame by exposure, I have found many mutilated insane, deprived either of the hands or the feet, and sometimes of both.

In Massachusetts we trace repetition of like circumstances. In the fifth annual report of the State hospital it is stated that "many patients have been received into the institution who have been badly frozen; some in such manner as to have lost their limbs -- others a part of them." "Within a week from the date of this report a man was sent who had been confined three years in a cage, where be had been repeatedly badly frozen; and in the late severe weather so much so that his extremities were actually in a state of mortification when he arrived. He survived but two days."

In 1841 and 1842 I traced personally the condition of more than five hundred insane men and women in Massachusetts wholly destitute of appropriate care. In one county jail alone there were twenty-eight, more than half of whom were furious maniacs. In another jail, in an adjoining county, were twenty-two neglected creatures. It was to this jail -- just presented by the grand jury as a nuisance, a place totally unfit for even temporary use -- that a female patient was hastily removed from the poor-house of D--, in order, as was said, that she might be more comfortable -- in reality to evade and avoid searching investiga-tions entered upon by strong authority.

Said the keeper of one county prison, in which were many insane, committed "not for crime or misdemeanor," but for safekeeping, or because dangerous to be at large, and in default of sufficient hospital provision for the same, "My prison resembles more the infernal regions than any place on the earth!" Almost without interval might be heard furious exclamations, blasphemous language, and the wildest ravings, bowls and shrieks. In three towns of one county alone (Essex) I found sixty neglected cases. The returns of 1842 exhibited an aggregate of one hundred and thirty-fire in that county. On the 24th of December, the thermometer below zero, I visited a poor-house; found one of the insane inmates, a woman, in a small apartment entirely unfurnished: no chair, table, nor bed -- neither bundle of straw nor a lock of hay. The cold was intense. On the bare floor crouched the wretched occupant of this dreary place, her limbs contracted, the chin resting immovably upon her knees: she shuddered convulsively, and drew, as well as she was able, more closely about her the fragments of garments which constituted her sole protection against unfit exposure and the biting cold. But the attendant, as I passed out from this den, remarked that they used "to throw some blankets over her at night."