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It is now nearly ten years since my essay- "The Curability of Insanity," enlarged from the original in the annual report for the official year 1875-76 of the Northampton Lunatic Hospital--was read before the New England Psychological Society. Meanwhile, seven other articles upon the same subject have been embodied in my annual reports to the trustees of the aforesaid institution. Those papers have been favorably received by a large number of readers, both at home and abroad. It is not presumptuous to claim that they have greatly modified the aspect of insanity, as a curable mental condition, in the view of a large proportion of the persons most interested in the subject. They have caused a very important change in the statistical methods of Massachusetts, in this country, and Great Britain in Europe, whereby the reader is informed of the number of persons, as well as of patients, or cases, that recover. This more nearly perfect method will undoubtedly gradually find its way to other States and countries, until it becomes universal. Under these circumstances, hoping that they may still be beneficial in the directions indicated, and by the expressed desire of some of the leaders in the great work of public charity and beneficence in this country, I have here brought those papers together, in a form convenient for preservation, perusal, and reference. The book, as a book, is simply what it is represented to be in its title, --"A series of Studies, "--Each of them essentially, or to a great extent, independent of the others. It consequently follows that any criticism of it on the assumption, either expressed or implied, that it is, or that it professes to be, a well-digested, logically-constructed monograph, would be unjust, and hence worthy of deprecation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2005 APA, all rights reserved).

Mental illness. --- Psychiatry --- History.