We have found our building and location suitable and healthy; while sickness prevailed all around us, we have had none. Our heating and ventilation work well, and with the pure water and air the patient has health, and a good chance for improvement in his condition.

We hand you herewith the very full report of Dr. E. A. Kilbourne, our superintendent, from which you will be able to gather all particulars of the institution and its patients, with suggestions as to the future. We hope soon to have placed in our hands the means of finishing this much needed institution, and especially the central building, without which the asylum can hardly be expected to perform its work fully or satisfactorily to the patient or the public.

We also hand you the report of Mr. S. V. Shipman, architect, with statements of building, in detail, and estimates for the future building wants of the asylum.

We send also our treasurer's report, showing his account with the asylum and the State, and have forwarded a detailed account and vouchers to the Auditor of State, for all, in items.

Hoping that your Excellency may, upon thorough investigation of our duties performed, find what we have endeavored to give, careful attention and economical management, with results fully up to the expectations of the State, and of those whose duty it is to overlook our acts. Respectfully submitted.

ELGIN, Dec. 13, 1872.

C. N. HOLDEN,

H. SHERMAN,
OLIVER EVERETT,
Trustees.

REPORT OF THE SUPERINTENDENT.

To the Board of Trustees of the Northern Illinois Hospital and Asylum for the Insane:

GENTLEMEN: In presenting this first biennial report of the operations of the Hospital since its opening in April last, it affords me pleasure to be able to state that the institution has enjoyed a period of general good health and prosperity. While surrounded and embarrassed with the numerous difficulties, cares and dangers incident to the organization of every new institution of this character, we yet have been remarkably exempt from disasters of every kind.

In the midst, too, of an unusual amount of sickness in this city and vicinity during the past season, which very seriously affected all the industries of the community in which we live, we have escaped. This, together with freedom from accidents and calamities of every kind, during a period when they might reasonably be apprehended, furnishes cause for deep gratitude to the giver of all good.

The operations of the hospital from April 3d, 1872-the date of the admission of the first patient-to the close of the fiscal year ending November 30th, 1872, are succinctly given in the tabular statements herewith submitted.

In relation to the cases of death, it is proper to say that of the ten fatal cases, six entered the hospital in a state of almost complete exhaustion from the ravages of general paralysis or prostrated organic disease of the brain, and had suffered from neglect and improper treatment in jails and alms-houses. One was carried off by dysentery, one by erysipelas of the head and one by chronic lung disease, while one died from the effects of acute mania.

In preparing our statistical tables we have been guided by the recommendations of the American Association, and have used the forms proposed by them. From the shortness of the time during which we have been receiving patients, however, many of those tables, if prepared, could have no value, as they would embrace too short space of time and too small figures to admit of any useful deduction being made ; on this account there are several which have been omitted. There is in the State of Illinois only one way of committing insane persons, and that is by jury trial in the county courts.