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Now I would ask the public, after reading these reports, to compare them with the following cases, which I charge against the officers of the institution. Cases of horrid, barbarous and inhuman cruelty, have been practiced at the Maine Insane Hospital. In my charges before the committee, I contended that sick patients were allowed to suffer alone, -- die, without a friend or human being present to hear their last sad sigh, and close their glazed eyes.

CHARLES SAVAGE, Jr., testified that Mr. Myers died alone in his gallery. MR. MILES was left alone at night, as usual, when sick: was heard to groan through the night, and was found dead in the morning. CHARLES VARNUM was left alone and died very suddenly. Mrs. Eastman died alone. MR. HUNTER, of Topsham, was sick with the dysentery and died alone. Mr. STEWART, of Farmington, also died alone. MR. GOULD, of Belgrade, died alone.

ABUSES OF THE SHOWER BOX.

I, myself, saw Mr. Andrews, of Lovell, inhumanly showered by Mr. Hall, the Supervisor, simply to punish him for shutting himself up in his room. It was done in the coldest winter weather, and when he was taken out of the Shower Box his skin puffed up in large white blotches in spots all over his body; the effects of the cold water.

I have frequently heard the Shower Bath given in the dead hours of night, when it would seem to me as though they would drown their victims. They would scream until they were so completely exhausted that they could make no more noise, and then they would cease their midnight tortures. Dr. Bates ordered Wm. Hanscom showered, to punish him for some saucy words given to him.

JAMES P. WEEKS, supervisor, took a patient, because he refused to eat, and showered him in a terrible manner, and shivering and shaking conveyed him to the "lodge," and kept him thereabout two weeks, and then brought him into the gallery sick, in consequence of this cruel treatment.

ANNA O'CONNER, an orphan Irish girl, was showered for punishment, for refusing to go into the kitchen to work until she finished washing her dress, and the matron boxed her ears because she did not come at the first call.

EVERETT HOWARD, of Guilford, was inhumanly showered by Weeks and Bartlett, for letting water run: they asking him if he would let the water run again if they would let him out alive? to which be replied he would not.

CAPT. FREEMAN showered a man, a weak and feeble patient, by the orders and under the eye of the first Superintendant, and when he opened the door he fell like a dead man upon the floor, and they thought he was dead, but by great exertion this victim was finally restored. By the same as the above, another patient -- and he is the same one alluded to as having burnt himself in his cage -- a stout and powerful man, was at the hospital, imagining himself to be God, and said he could make it rain whenever he pleased. They persuaded him that he could make it rain, and to keep himself dry when the shower came on he had better strip off his garments and get in the closet out of the rain. He did so, and they then told him, after fastening the door, to command it to rain. He did; and thereupon they let down not less than two full barrels of water on him. They then told him they were satisfied that he could make it rain. He replied that he was aware of that, but did not think there was going to be a flood.

DEACON TURNER once told me that he went down from the attic of the female wing to stop the abusive showering of a female patient.

MR. WEEKS, the supervisor, threatened to shower Mr. Reed because he found fault with the abusive treatment of Mr. Eaton.

JOHN WHEELER, a perfectly unaccountable being, has frequently been showered to punish him for breaking his crockery.

JOHN CARTER, a boy from Portland, was also showered to punish him for breaking a small bowl!

EBEN BLAKE, of Portland, a demented patient, was so inhumanly showered by Babcock, the attendant, that he fell upon the floor like a dead man, when the door of the Shower Box was opened!

MR. WEEKS, the Supervisor, testified before the committee that he had let down a barrel of water at a time, to allay excitement, but never kept them in the box over two or three minutes, and never to punish them.

CHARLES SAVAGE, Jr., testified that he had known Weeks to keep the patients in the shower box fifteen or twenty minutes, and that it was done to punish them.

Now there need not be any doubts at all that the shower box is, in nineteen cases out of twenty, used as an instrument of torture, applied for punishment for the most trivial offences. Thus, victims or patients are sent there by their kind friends, under the impression that they will receive that attention and kind care, they could not receive at home. But how far this fallacy is fallacy, read the foregoing cases and judge yourself whether you could find it in your heart to send a friend or relative to such a place of cruelty and heartlessness? I feel sure that if this book is properly read, and the force of its trumpet-tongued arguments be fairly laid before the people, the mad-house will become a sepulchre of terror and dread for all who have hearts to feel, and eyes to see; and instead of forwarding your poor, distracted, or tottering brother to such a den, it would be just and merciful to build their funeral pyre, and place them on it to die.