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inheritable. And he who says, "I gave my children all the health I got," says something better and nobler than he who says, "I gave my children double the property I got from my father."

We confess, it is difficult to see why our present civilization should have produced this bane. That we pet our lunatics, and number them as carefully as David did the people of Israel, is true, and the more we number, the more the plague rages. That the number of lunatics in asylums at the present time is greater than it was in times past is true, but it proves nothing but that asylum accommodation is much increased. That the number calculated to be in England at the. present time is greater than it was some years ago, only suggests a more efficient system of ascertaining the actual amount of lunacy throughout the country, or that phases of life are [26] now recognized as insanity which were formerly classed under the head, sanity. But all the statistics that can be procured are utterly untrustworthy. It seems to us, however, that another argument tells against the supposition that civilization is a predisposing cause of insanity. Imbecility is the form that mental unsoundness usually assumes in uncivilized countries, while in countries which are advanced in civilization, mania is more common. Surely, then, if the mania has increased under the influence of civilization, imbecility must have decreased in the same proportion. It is surely unfair to ask to be allowed to run with the hare, and at the same to hunt with the hounds. If civilization has to bear the blame of the one, it ought to have the merit of the other. Again, it is assumed that the conditions of life are less healthy now than of yore. Some gentlemen somewhat inconsistently, ascribe insanity in man to the awful struggle to get rich, and ascribe the same disease in woman to the want of this struggle. But how does our age differ from others in this respect? Had they no struggles in time past: The struggle for bread with the gnawing tooth of hunger for a spur? Is the death-struggle less deleterious to mental health than the miser's grasp? But the struggle sharpens wits: men are "moulded through their faults" and their misfortunes. Adversity wears a jewel in its head. Even this

struggle for money, which takes not a few of our fellows into the dust and mud by day, makes nature more and more man's handmaiden.'

36. Other remote Causes considered.-One author? endeavors to show that the law of nature which throws aside the weak and useless, and gives life's battle to the strong, causes insanity. He illustrates this principle by the dominion of man over weak woman-shows that some women, under the present system, must sin to live, and that marriage is the true and pure woman's goal; he asserts that, in consequence of various circumstances, they cannot all get married, and having no real work to do, that which was meant for honey, turns to gall: "sweet wants" have been in the heart in vain; desires have withered, because there was no answer to those demands of nature. That marriage is the chief end of a woman's existence, is, according to this author, due to the fact that for centuries women have suffered deprivation of liberty, have been in servitude to man, and have been taught that to minister in one way to man's enjoyment was their highest function--that, when this hope fails, the heart and brain sicken, and they go mad.

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Nothing is so popular in our days as this kind of reasoning, which is not reasoning at all. One may ask with refererence to the above, (1.) Is it a fact, that in consequence of this circumstance women do go insane? (2.) If there are more women, in proportion to the population's calculated number, insane than men? And if these questions could be answered in the affirmative, one might, upon theoretical considerations, think that as Nature trains by means of conditions, if she trained women to look upon sexual intercourse as a goal, Nature has done wrong; and Nature is, to say the least of it, a very bad schoolmistress. If it could be shown that the proportion between men and women varied at the present time from what it formerly did, there might be some weight in the argument. But as that cannot be shown, it is difficult to see how an education of the sex, by means of con

Dr. Johnson said that men were seldom more harmlessly employed than when they were making money.

2 Dr. Maudsley, in his "Psychology and Pathology of Mind."

ditions, to look upon sexual intercourse as a high function, should not all along have included in its curriculum lessons of strength under its deprivation-a strength which would withstand those disturbances which ever rise, according to this author, and which are the proximate causes of insanity. Why Nature, with as good means at her disposal, should teach one lesson and implant certain characteristics in the sex, and refrain from teaching the other, or implanting the other set of characteristics, it is impossible to say. Why, under such circumstances, women should masturbate, become religious, or go mad, or do all three, it is difficult to

see.

237. Argument as to increase of Insanity considered.Overcrowding, and the very great distinction in respect to wealth and luxury, do, along with many other circumstances, lead to insanity; but to adduce these tendencies as proofs of the increase of insanity simply on the ground that they are remotely predisposing causes, is absurd. If the causes of insanity are used at all in this connection, it must be only by way of comparison (and that a careful one) with those predisposing causes which existed in times past, with a view from their relative potency (if that can be ascertained without solving the question of increase) to argue as to the number of perverts from sanity to insanity, which each of them made. This is a large question: assertion will not meet its demands.

238. Influence of Civilization upon Insanity. The question as to the influence of civilization is infinitely more [28] important in its connection with the change of type or in relation to synthetic etiology, than to the question of increase. That the pursuits, the conditions of social life, the forms of religion, and the direction of national thought, influence and modify character, and in that way modify the quality of insanity, is certain. In considering the question of the causes of insanity, it is of the utmost importance to remember that anything which may affect bodily health or mental ease or comfort in the present, may be regarded as a cause of insanity. The roots of disease are deep in the past. The vice,

the indiscretion, the overwork, the one-sidedness, the narrowmindedness of our ancestors did not only make the history of their own times, but is making the pathology of ours. Every action, every event which contravenes the laws of health, however remote that action or event may be, is to be regarded as a predisposing cause of insanity. It is almost constant in practice to call the disease itself the cause. This confusion of cause and effect is very common, and it is only scientific training and much natural aptitude which will enable the diagnost on all occasions to distinguish these. Thus, we often hear that intemperance was the cause of insanity, and in many cases, as we shall hereafter see, excessive use of stimulants is a cause of insanity; but in half of the cases in which it is common to say the disease is due to the vice, the vice is in reality only a symptom or manifestation of the disease. In most cases, then, really to understand the origin of insanity, one must understand the murosis or psychosis, the long history of the tendencies to disease; for it is well understood that just as poisons are poisons only in relation to the constitution they enter, so that one man may swallow with perfect impunity what would cause death in another, so certain events may cause mental unhealth in one which would only produce healthy emotion in another. In this wide sense, then, any conditions of unhealth, such as excessive strain, excessive anxiety, excessive indulgence, diminished mental or bodily activity, must be regarded as predisposing causes; and consequently all those tendencies in time and in civilization to produce disease-all those tendencies which go to produce excessive demands before the organism has been formed by many calls to meet such strains, are to be placed in this category, and to be regarded as bringing about those conditions which are favorable to disease.

239. Sex considered in relation to the Causes of Insanity. Women were at one time thought to be more predisposed to insanity than men. Esquirol and Haslam agreed that it was so. But at the present time most writers seem to imagine that men are more prone to mental disease than women. Many writers, in their utter incompetence to deal with figures, which are two-edged swords, have computed the

number of patients admitted into one asylum in a certain time, and concluded that the proportion of women to men in these admissions is likely to be in the proportion of insane women to insane men throughout the world, and hence deduce a theory as to the predisposition. But it is to be remembered that the proportion between the insane of the two sexes is not found to be the same in all countries; and it can be confidently affirmed, that even in the same country, it varies at different periods. The argument as to the weakness of the female sex making her more liable to suffer from adverse circumstances, is, as has been already shown, fallacious. To say that her weakness is brought about by her servitude, and that it is her weakness makes her liable, just in consequence of never having been exposed to risks, is to reason in a circle. One must look at the whole circumstances. If her servitude has made her weak, it has been by protecting her from certain works and hardships which men have undertaken. If these works and hardships are still undertaken by men, then women, as a class, are not exposed to those circumstances which can, together with their weakness, lead to insanity. One circumstance must not be regarded as the predisposing cause of insanity in a class where other circumstances are to be set against it. Rest is produced by forces that could move. Women in their present state are said to be less liable to those forms of insanity which occur in men, and can be traced to intemperance and other excesses. But it is their weakness and consequent servitude which have kept them from those works which lead to those excesses. is absurd, therefore, to say that sex or its weakness predisposes to insanity. We should say that the numbers of men and of women who go insane, differ little, if at all, and that it is impossible to argue that sex has any influence as a predisposing cause in the production of insanity.

It

40. Age considered in connection with the Causes of Insanity. It follows from what has been said above, that at certain periods of life men are more prone to go insane than at others. Weakness has to be considered as a cause of disease, but it is quite erroneous to do so unless it is understood with reference to a certain strain. Although an exotic might

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