of the sun's rays into the dormitories had most to do with it. I omitted to mention in my first account of this pregnant instance of exemption, that the younger children resident in the institution were not isolated from the children who attended a large day-school conducted within its walls; and that most, if not all, of the day scholars (living in the vicinity) were attacked with measles during the epidemic. I also omitted, being limited as to space, to give the following colloquy, which I am induced to set down here, as it may serve a purpose.

A venerable and genial priest, Dr. B―, who accompanied me through the dormitories of the Reformatory, was amused at and curious about my manipulation of the paillasses, examination of the aspects of windows, &c.; but when at the end of the inspection he was fully seized by the "straw mildew theory," he fairly bubbled over with raillery and good-humouredly poked his fun at these new-fangled notions. After a few friendly passes "Well now, seriously, Father B., what's your explanation of the exemption of all the inmates here from the measles which has been raging, as you know, for weeks outside?"

"Oh! as a matter of fact, the children are so well cared for here, you see. They get pure air and exercise, and so much is done in the way of wholesome diet and in looking to the sewage and ventilation and other sanitary arrangements that these diseases can't get in that accounts for it to my mind."

"Then it follows, I suppose, that the children in every other Catholic establishment in the colonies must be badly cared for, seeing that this is the only one amongst them all that has been free from measles. Is that the conclusion I am to draw from your premises, Padré ?"—"Out of this, you villain: no more of your mean catch questions and twopenny-halfpenny dialectics. Sister would it hurt your conscience now to give this heretic and myself a biscuit and a glass of sherry?"

It should be observed, in order to account for the sunny dormitories of the Abbotsford Reformatory, that the building was originally intended for a factory, and then came into the possession of the Roman Catholic Church and was made to serve its present purpose. It was a matter of pure accident,

therefore, that the inmates had wholesome sleeping places and dry straw to lie on. It may be added that I have recently ascertained that there has not been a case of measles in the institution from that day to this, although the disease has been rife occasionally in the immediate vicinity.

CHAPTER XVII.

The exemption from measles of the lunatics and idiots in the Metropolitan Lunatic Asylums of Melbourne, Victoria-Lunatics have no special exemption-Their exemption in Victorian asylums and the implication of their attendants clearly due to differentiation in the dormitories.

IN the year (1874-5) of the great epidemic of measles in the colony of Victoria, I learnt that the lunatics in the two principal lunatic asylums had had entire exemption from the disease, although, strange to say, it had not spared those who had charge of the insane. This wholesale exemption of an entire class of persons was so remarkable as to invite the closest scrutiny. The net results of the inquiry I made, together with some remarks, were given in the paper before referred to, and are as follows:

"An interesting and pregnant set of facts was supplied by the Kew and Yarra Bend Lunatic Asylums, near Melbourne. One of these at the time of the outbreaks contained nearly 800, the other over 900 patients, including a number of idiot and epileptic boys and girls. At each asylum resided families of children belonging to the medical officers, storekeepers, gardeners, and other officials. A few of these children at Kew were under the same roof with the lunatics, but the greater number lived in detached houses about the grounds. During the summer all the sane children, without exception, and some of the sane adults, were attacked with measles, but not one case occurred amongst either children or adults in the wards or cottages of the insane. The only possible cause I could discover for this sharply cut line between the sane and the insane was in the bedding. The general conditions affecting the two classes were the same, but all the lunatics except those on air- or water-beds had

ticks filled with straw to lie on. These paillasses of the patients are not only exposed freely in the wards daily, and aired and dried in the sun as often as may be, but they are replenished with fresh straw once a fortnight. The staffs of the two asylums, not having before them any obvious necessity for taking such measures in their own cases, followed the usual custom of the colonykept their children's bedrooms cool and shady, and took no thought for the straw on which they lay. During the measles epidemic several cases of erysipelas and some of typhoid, diphtheria, scarlet fever, and dysentery occurred among the patients, and, strangely enough, on May 23 and 25, within a few weeks of our mid-winter, when measles had died out elsewhere, two cases of measles occurred in the Kew Asylum. They appeared in separate but adjoining wards, in adult males who had been a long time in the asylum. Neither of the patients were wet' or dirty patients. One was domiciled in a ward with thirty-five, the other with thirty-nine patients, not one of whom was attacked. (The measles patients were isolated at once.) These cases would be difficult to square with any etiological view of measles. I can only suppose that by accident the straw in the paillasses of the two patients had come from the store wet or mouldy from some cause.”

It may be added that measles have been prevalent in the colony two or three times since the epidemic of 1874-5, but the last summer (1887-8) Melbourne and the neighbourhood suffered from the severest visitation since the great epidemic; and yet none of the idiot children or the adult patients in the Kew or Yarra Bend Asylums have been attacked, though one idiot girl had measles the previous summer. In January this year there were in the Kew Asylum 522 male and 455 female adults, and 36 male and 17 female idiot children; while in the Yarra Bend Asylum there were, in January, 451 male and 341 female adults, 9 idiot boys and 10 idiot girls.

In the first place it has to be considered whether lunacy throws any protection over the inmates of asylums as regards measles. Do they, by virtue of their mental condition, enjoy such special exemption from the disease as would sufficiently account for the differentiation between the lunatics in these two asylums and the sane persons in attendance upon them?

Beyond references to the effect that epileptics seem to be less liable to contract this disease than other classes, there is nothing in the history of measles to show that the insane will not take them as readily as the sane when both are placed under the same conditions. They are just as susceptible as the general population to all other specific infective diseases when equally exposed to the infective agents; and as a matter of fact they are more subject to attack from two forms of infective disease than the sane-not, on the other hand, because of their greater susceptivity to these diseases, but simply because their incarceration in dungeon-like dormitories and their peculiar habits ensure their getting a larger dose of the specific poisons of the diseases in question (phthisis and dysentery).

There is no ground for supposing that lunatics resist the effects of a given infective agent, all other things being equal, any more effectually than sane persons. On the contrary, the presumption is that, given an equal number of insane and of the sane in charge of them, a far larger proportion of the former than of the latter would succumb to an equal dose of the measles poison. As Dr. Cobbold says in his Report for 1883 (Asylum for Idiots, Earlswood):-" When it is remembered that a large proportion of our Inmates are of an age at which the greatest susceptibility to infectious diseases exists, and that their constitutions are as a rule much weaker than those of ordinary children, I think it is matter for congratulation that epidemic diseases are not more frequent amongst us."

In point of fact, although measles are not common among lunatics in English asylums, we have certain evidence that the malady does reach them. Going back through the Reports of the Commissioners in Lunacy for the last dozen years or so one comes across three or four notices of measles. In the Report

on the Royal Albert Asylum for Idiots, Lancaster, is the following entry on February 23, 1885:-"The death-rate has been very low, and for 1884 it amounted only to 27 per cent. of the average number resident. There has been no epidemic beyond an outbreak of common measles, and the present health is good." (There were no deaths from the disease; and as no