ASYLUM REPORTS

NOTE.–So many asylum reports remained on hand unreviewed that the editors experienced the unpleasant necessity of a summary method of notice in the current issue. Yet there are other reasons that make such brief notice fitting. Asylum reports are necessarily of uneven interest, and asylum superintendents are in varying degree vulnerable, both as to reports and individual disposition. To criticise adversely is often, to incur displeasure, to give unstinted praise is to excite envy and lead to aspersion of editorial motive, while to omit all reference to reports received, is, we have long since discovered, not good policy. Neither is it always discreet that asylum physicians, occupants, all of us, of vitreous mansions with some broken or breakable windows, should throw missiles unless thoroughly satisfied as to the transparency and strength of existing home material. Who, indeed, shall cast the first stone? On the whole then this present method has compensating advantages, and in any case Ne quid nimis is always a good motto in literary work.