The herald and mail. [volume] (Columbia, Tenn.) 1873-188?, 1874-05-01
INSANITY.
Statistics Show an Increase In the Num-
ber of Insane Persons.

1 @@~NANe~SO
ber of Insane Persons.
The great master of statistics, Quote.
| let, considers insanity under the univer-
sal point of view of the Development
of the Moral and Spiritual Faculties of
Man :" yet there seems to be an impor-
| tant distinction to be made between the
vicious perversion of the mind and
heart and merely physical disease of
| the brain. Moral statistics have mostly
to deal with the moral and mental
aspects of insanity, and with the infu-
ence of perverse habits in bringing on
the bodily disease. It is hard to draw
| the line between the moral and physi-
| cal factors of insanity, although there
is line of division between them and
in some cases the disease is wholly
physical, the result of inheritance, eli
mate, or acute sickness, and in other
cases it springs from pride, sensuality,
debauchery, and habitual vices, and has
previous history. II preparatory i'm
morality, which ends in what is called
"moral insanity"
The general opinion is that insanity
is on the increase in modern civilization,
and is multiplying that saddest form of
death, the ruin of the intellect; but it
is not easy to give positive facts to sus
tain that view. It is not just to base
our estimate upon the increase of resi-
dents in insane hospitals, since the in
crease may only prove that better care
is now taken of the insane, and the pre-
judice against those institutions has
been dying away. Yet wherever obser-
vations have been made, the increase in
the number of the insane has been re-
ported as so constant, and under all Cir
cumstances as in such regular proper
tion, that we cannot help believing that
this evil grows among us as decidedly
as suicide. The proportion of the in
crease in the different kinds of insanity,
and the closer investigation of its dis
tribution in city and country, as well as
in the different civil and professional
classes, leave no doubt that the peculiar
ways and moral mischiefs of our mod
ern civilization favor the progress of
this calamity. Without being able to
declare the absolute correctness of the
figures, we may ascribe out of the 3OO,-
900 insane of Europe Gncluding idiots) |
the greatest relative number, two per |
thousand, to the most highly civilized |
nation, the German while the Rou-
manians hold the middle ground, near
ly one per thousand, and Sclavic Tar |
tars the lowest place, 0.6, or six-tenths |
of one, per thousand. It is much the |
same with insanity as with suicide, and
it prevails, like suicide, more in the
north and northwest of Europe than in
the less civilized southern and south
eastern parts. In all the more civilized
too, there is more increase of
insanity than of idiocy; and it is the
same in cities as compared with the
c9untry, for the stir and passion of
civilization tend more to
distract the brain into madness than to
lull it into idiocy.
Among different callings the profess
,ions that are called liberal are most in
,lined to delusion and melancholy.
While these constitute only about
twentieth of the whole population, or
J. .4 per cent, they number among the
1890, and among the de-
irious 9.41 per cent. In general, mel
Lacholy and mania prevail more among
women, idiocy and delusion more among
nen.
In respect to civil condition, the un-
widows, and, above all, diyor-
ed persons, give a larger proportion of
insane Than the married. Although
who are little, if any, exposed
o insanity, are reckoned in the percen-
age of the unmarried-sixty-two to
ixty-four per cent.-yet throughout
Germany the proportion of celibates [
insane is much more unfavor {
ble-about seventy per cent.-and in
Bavaria as much as eighty-one per cent.
divorced women are especially liable to
elusion and mania. Thus, while in
axony the divorced constitute only 6
16 per cent, or sixteen-hundreths of S
ne per cent, or three-tenths of one !
er cent, among women, they give to t
he insane asylums in the relation of I
21 and 3. 04 per cent. thus in mania t
be proportion of divorced women rises /
s high as 6.02 per cent, and in the cat {
CORY of individual delusion as high as J
We per cent.-HarperS Magazine. q