The employment of warm and cold bathing in the treatment of the insane is of the highest antiquity. Three thousand years ago, long before Pindar had sung his famous αϱιστον μεν υδωϱ, or that Hippocrates, arid after him Celsus, Aretæus, and Galen, had given their testimony to the value of its application in head affections, and in nervous disorders; Melampus the Pylian, the first “alienist,” and indeed the first physician of whom we have any record, is said to have cured mania and melancholia by the administration of hellebore and the use of the warm bath. It may be mythical, that by the last prescription he restored the health of a princess, and gained a wife; but it is not the less true that his practice, as recorded or alluded to by Homer, Herodotus, and Ovid, was rational and successful; and that the first specialist appears to have well understood the efficacy of purgation, and the beneficial effects of bathing, in the treatment of mental disease.