THE PSYCHOLOGY OF INTIMIDATION.

113 laid to heart at more than one Ministry of the Interior where the lesson it conveys may one day have to be would experience the advantages to be derived from a complete change of scene, environment, and ideas that our repeated. Whether the scene of repression and capture be the interior of a garrison, or a lunatic asylum, or, as in invalids experience in European sojourn. the recent case, a criminally occupied tenement, the agencies Dr. WOOD points out one advantage which the spas in this employed must always be far in excess of those apparently country enjoy over some of the more favoured continental sufficient. The impression on the individual or individuals spas-namely, the cooler climate of Britain, favouring, as it aimed at must be produced that the means of capture and does, all kinds of outdoor exercise. He describes clearly coercion make resistance hopeless. In lunatic asylums, espethe categories of foreign invalids for whom our spas are cially south of the Alps, this, the psychological, element in with the violently aggressive or recalcitrant subject typically suitable, including those who thrive in a rela- dealing has long been left out of account, with consequences all too tively cool climate and are able to walk well; those who deplorable both to the party coercing and the party coerced. in association with a complete change of environment No maniac is ever so furious as not to be impressed by the derive benefit from baths that are neither very hot nor taken overwhelming forces antagonising him ; thebelva umana’ necessarily in close succession ; and, of course, those whose shares the instinct of his animal counterpart in resigning maladies are held to be suitable for treatment by the principal himself to foroe majeure. Forty years ago the columns of THE LANCET were the arena of animated discussion on waters in this country. Foreign physicians might learn much alleged deeds of violence perpetrated in lunatic asylums on from a visit to the spas of this country. They would find the patients whose recalcitrancy had goaded the personnel out appliances excellent in every way, and would probably arrive of self-control, and cases were referred to in which the at the conclusion insisted on by Dr. WOOD that con- keeper had thrown the lunatic down and by travelling tinental health resorts should not be regarded as competing over his prostrate body on his knees had fractured with British health resorts nor British with continental. one or more of the ribs and thus reduced the wretched In this connexion a suggestive remark is made by Dr. man to impotency-with traumatic pleurisy as the result. Evidence was adduced that once deeds of violence, WOOD, who has found that when treating foreigners in occurring rarely, if at all, in the British Isles, were London the sick-room temperature usually has to be kept by no means uncommon in Francs and Italy, where the from one to three degrees Centigrade higher than would personnel in charge of the inmates of asylums was so be tolerable to English patients. Whether this be due to inadequate in number that loss of temper on the part of the longer and colder winters of continental stations having the keeper, goaded past endurance by refractory cases, drove led to more efficient methods of domestic heating, or to the him to the hideous practice cf rib-breaking referred to. Such abuses having become known, the remedy of reinforcing more uniform exposure of the body to a higher mean temperathe personnel and bringing it up to something like the ture during the warmer summers, it certainly suggests that proportion regarded as de riguer in the British Isles was foreign invalids may with advantage to themselves find in put in practice on the continent. The violent lunatic, many of our winter stations convenient summer resorts ati overawed by the superior force antagonising him, ceased to the time when they are largely deserted by Britons. Britishl be refractory, relapsed into sudden calm, and so spared the and continental health resorts might prove complementary togrersonz-nel the extra call on its patience, and himself the rough usage of an angry and provoked attendant. Thepsychoone another in this respect, as, probably, in many others. logy of intimidation,’ thus recognised in treatment, now explains the lessened frequency of deeds of violence in the asylums of Southern Europe. The same influence must be used where degenerate man, exemplified in the violent criminal, the revolutionary desperado, the law-defying, lawsubverting anarchist, manifests his baneful activities ; he too Ne quid nimis." must see the hopelessness of contending with overwhelming

strong point, for obviously foreign invalids at British resorts

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Annotations. "

THE

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PSYCHOLOGY OF INTIMIDATION.

"No incident has of late years so impressed the Italian imagination," writes our Florence correspondent, "as the siege of the foreign anarchists in the City of London. The previous acts in the drama which culminated in Sidneystreet were not without precedentabroad ; the assassination of agents of the public force in the discharge of their duty is by no means unexampled, paiticularly south of the Alps. But the siege of theFort Chabrol’ in Paris, and that of the Via Ottivianoin Rome, sink into insignificance beside the blockade and bombardment of the tenem nt in the Whitechapel quarter, de’ended as it was with a desperation that taxed the resources of the ’ centre of civilisation’ to overcome. At first the foreign critic of the besieging party was inclined to censure, if not to ridicule, its members and equipment, but gradually, as the circumstances became known, the censure nnd ridicule gave place to genuine admiration of the combined forethought, promptitude, and effect with which the operations were carried out. Nothing short of the means employed could have availed the public force in the time at their disposal, and the result is being

I force."

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CHOLERA IN MADEIRA. WHILE the cholera epidemic at Madeira appears to be undoubtedly on the decline, the island is still practically isolated and postal communication is fitful. We have received a further letter from our special correspondent there, dated Dec. 31st, 1910, in which he says: "The official figures on the 30th of December show a total of 1245 the commencement of the cases and 360 deaths since 1 In Funchal itself case was reported on the epidemic. 30th inst., and the outlying parishes yielded 5 cases. The of the disease seems far spent, and the mortality, much lessened now, was never very heavy in percentage. No English person has been attacked, nor any of the Portuguese above the lowest stratum of their society. The medical work has been good, and illustrates emphatically the proficiency of our Portuguese colleagues in modern bacteriological and clinical methods." It is interesting to receive so excellent a report of the progressiveness of our Portuguese colleagues, and we hope that their efforts will now be vigorously seconded and their

activity