TABLE showing the Population and the Number of Insane in each county in the State, according to the National Ceusus; also the Number Admitted, Discharged, and Remaining at the Asylum, December 1st, 1866.

TABLE showing the number of years wherein those who died in 1865-6 had been insane.

TABLE showing the months wherein deaths have occurred during the last two years, and the number.

CHAPLAIN'S REPORT.

To the Superintendent of the Michigan Asylum for the Insane: DEAR SIR-The inquiry is not unfrequently made of me, whether religious services are of real value and interest to the inmates of the Asylum; and if so, how these services can be best conducted, and the truths of the Bible be most usefully and successfully presented.

It is not my purpose to enter into a discussion of the subject matter of this inquiry, or to give a formal answer to questions suggested and involved in it. A full consideration of the topics belongs more properly to others, and would be out of time and place, in this brief report. It is sufficient to say here, that such inquiries spring sometimes from mere curiosity, or from a scepticism only partially concealed.

Oftener however, they come from those who either do not know, or fail to keep in mind, the widely different classes of inmates, and the singularly varied forms in which mental disease manifests itself.

Patients suffering from entire imbecility, or dementia, or from violent attacks of acute mania, are for the time, beyond the reach of human instruction, or human consolation, through the ordinary modes by which mind communicates with mind. The shattered framework in which the soul dwells, must if possible, be repaired; and the obstructed channels through which thought and feeling flow, must if possible, be opened again, before the intellectual faculties, or the moral and religious emotions, can be reached and awakened.

But among almost all the other classes of the inmates of the Asylum, are very many persons who directly, or indirectly, receive great advantage, in various ways, I am persuaded, from

the brief and simple services of our chapel.

Many of these are members of Christian Churches. They are suffering, some of them, from mild or periodic forms of mental disorder.

Excepting at intervals of greater or less frequency, they are in possession of all their mental powers, with only some abatement of usual strength. To these, and to others who are nearly restored, all truths have a familiar and accustomed sound. The forms of worship, the tones of prayer, the songs of praise, words of instruction, or exhortation or comfort, are to them the same here as elsewhere. By these well-known, and often highly prized exercises, fresh assurance is constantly given, that they are not, while in the Asylum, and so necessarily apart from ordinary relationships and associations, outside of friendly and Christian society, of social and Christian influence, and of personal and Christian sympathy. If this were all; if no efforts were made to implant right principles, to give greater strength to good resolution, to aid in the formation of correct habits, to cure evil practices, and to kindle aspirations after purer and nobler ways of living, it would still be much.

For a vague notion, floating down through the darkness of the past, still lingers in the minds of some patients, of more of their friends, and of large numbers of the poorly informed portion of the community, that to be, or to have been, an inmate of an Asylum for the Insane, in some indefinite way, casts a shadow upon a person which no sunlight in the future can entirely dispel, or stamps a mark upon one which never wholly disappears. Thanks to a higher and better civilization, molded and permeated by the spirit of christianity, this false and hurtful notion is fast fading away. Any influence which hastens its final departure, and forbids its possible return, confers a great good upon society at large, and brings much of comfort to the hearts of many patients and their friends.

Among the most effective of these influences, I believe, are properly conducted social, literary and religious exercises and services.