CONCLUSION. The Report of the Superintendent, as a whole, is a masterly and full exposition of the practical' operations, as well as the wants and necessities of the Hospital, and embodies philosophic reflections as to the causes of the various phases of insanity and in regard to kindred matters, which will be valuable everywhere. We feel that we would scarcely be true to our duty as the Supervisors of this splendid charity, did we not say in conclusion that the people of Tennessee owe to the Superintendent and his subordinates the boon of a public recognition of the great ability and fidelity with which they have discharged their delicate and difficult trust. H. B. BUCKNER, PRESIDENT, Davidson County. JOHN L. T. SNEED, Shelby County. T. NIXON VAN DYKE, McMinn County. To the Board of Trustees of the Tennessee Hospital for the Insane: } The statute prescribing the government and administration of this Institution, held in trust by you for the benefit of the unfortunate class of the population of the State for which it was founded, makes it my duty, immediately before each session of the General Assembly, to prepare and present to you a Report specifically setting forth certain details of the important work for which it was designed, and exhibiting the statistics of its population for the biennial term, together with such other facts regarding its operations as may be necessary for the information of the body to which you report its history and condition. INTRODUCTORY. In submitting this, the twelfth biennial report of the Hospital, I am gratified to be able to do so under a sense that the term just closed has witnessed a fair degree of success in the accomplishment of the beneficent ends for which it was established, and that its career of uniform prosperity and good repute which has so long commended it to the public confidence, is unbroken. The period included has not been noted by events of unusual importance in the curriculum of affairs in an institution of this character, nor has it developed any facts of peculiar interest pertaining to the dreadful malady which afflicts its hapless household. To those who have immediate care and concern in the endeavor to ameliorate and restore minds blighted by disease, or wrecked by the adverse vicissitudes of fate, however monotonous may be the daily and nightly work, every fact possesses interest, and compels attention. The routine of such duty is never so complete as to exempt from the anxieties inseparable from its responsibility, or to permit relaxation of vigilance in any department. Amid a numerous and often crowded congregation of persons distempered and distraught as is that collected in the wards of an asylum for the insane, there is constant exposure to occurences unpleasant in character, and occasionally of untoward and regretful consequences, and in reflecting upon the history of a year or a term, the first impulse of one charged with the superintendency is to revert in gratitude to that from which those committed to his keeping have been spared, rather than to dwell upon that which has been effected in their behalf. The term reported has not witnessed a casualty to a patient from any source, nor has there been a successful attempt at suicide-the ever-haunting spectre of the apprehensions of those in care of the insane. It has been a number of years since a painful record of the latter kind has been made, and in view of the fact that, at times, our wards are overfull, the exemption should be marked to the credit of the faithful and thoughtful attendants whose association with patients is most constant and intimate. It is gratifying also, to note the absence of intercurrent disease amongst our population, or an impairment of its health dependent on local causes, or those generated by influences preventable by rigid cleanliness and sanitary foresight. During the autumn of this year, so calamitous in the ravages of disease in some sections of the State, and when the minds of all-the skilled and unskilled alike—were tortured with fears of the invasion of the inscrutable pestilence which seemed to go, as the wind, where it listed, extraordinary care was exercised to prevent the introduction of infection in any form, and the household had immunity even from fear of it. The statistical tables herewith appended furnish an exhibit of the numbers and characteristics of the population, |