In regard to some of the special influences brought to bear upon the patients in this institution, we have the following.  It is from a communication (in answer to a letter of inquiry) received by us from Dr. T.D.  Crothers, formerly of Binghampton, but now superintendent of the new Walnut Hill Asylum, at Hartford, Connecticut:  “You have failed to do us credit,” he says, “in supposing that we do not use the spiritual forces in our treatment.  We depend largely upon them.  We have a regularly-appointed chaplain who lives in the building;, and gives his entire time to the religious culture of the patients.  Rev. Dr. Bush was with us eight years.  He died a few months ago.  He was very devoted to his work, and the good he did, both apparent to us and unknown, was beyond estimate.  His correspondence was very extensive, and continued for years with patients and their families.  He was the counselor and adviser of many persons who did not know him personally, but through patients.  I have seen letters to him from patients in all conditions asking counsel, both on secular and spiritual matters; also the most heart-rending appeals and statements of fathers, mothers, wives and children, all of which he religiously answered.  He urged that the great duty and obligation of every drunkard was to take care of his body; to build up all the physical, to avoid all danger, and take no risks or perils; that his only help and reliance were on God and good health; that with regular living and healthy surroundings, and a mind full of faith and hope in spiritual realities, the disorder would die out.  Our new chaplain holds daily service, as usual, and spends much of his time among the patients.  He lives in the building, pronounces grace at the table and is personally identified as a power to help men towards recovery.  Quite a large number of patients become religious men here.  Our work and its influences have a strong tendency this way.  I believe in the force of a chaplain whose daily walk is with us; who, by example and precept, can win men to higher thoughts.  He is the receptacle of secrets and much of the inner life of patients that physicians do not reach.”

In another letter to us, Dr. Crothers says:  “Every asylum that I know of is doing good work, and should be aided and encouraged by all means.  The time has not come yet, nor the experience or study to any one man or asylum, necessary to build up a system of treatment to the exclusion of all others.  We want many years of study by competent men, and the accumulated experience of many asylums before we can understand the first principles of that moral and physical disorder we call drunkenness.”

TREATMENT.