As the Hospitals for the Insane in the United States of America have recently been prominently brought before the medical profession in England, it may not be uninteresting to the readers of this Journal to have a slight historical sketch of what may be called the past asylum movement in the States. I am not aware that this has been given before in any journal or work published in Great Britian. The peculiar difficulties of a new country, peopled by different races, and the constantly disturbing influence of immigration, ought to be borne in mind in this narrative. These difficulties are too frequently overlooked. In a letter I received from Miss Dix two years ago, she writes—“We have an amazing burden in all our charitable institutions of every class of disabled foreigners of all ages and in all stages of feeble or quite broken down conditions of health.”