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| THE INSANE ASYLUM, CORK. -This building, or rather series of buildings, founded early in the present century, is one of the most remarkable of the many publice structures which grace the southern metropolis of Ireland, sometimes called because of its literary celebrity, the Irish Athens. To minister to a mind diseased is indeed, a noble charity, and unfortunately in Ireland there is great need of it. The continued political disasters of the country and the disquieting social condition of the majority of the people, supplemented by very general distress, have had an injurious effect on Irish mental conditions. Lunacy, according to government statistics, has been decidely on the increase of late years. Some English writers, oddly enough, have attempted to account for it on the ground that the Irish people, who formerly drank milk almost exclusively at their meals, have become confirmed tea drinkers-almost as much so as the Russians. The Irish themselves laugh heartily at this English theory, and say it is not tea, but British rule, that is making them mad. The Cork Asylum, as shown in the sketch, fronts on the river Lee, and is otherwise pleasantly situated. It contains, at the present time, about a thousand inmated, many of them lunatics of a mild type, who in their rational intervals, fully appreciated the comfort of their surroundings. Patients are admitted from both the City and County of Cork. |
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