The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1876-05-18
The Causes of Insanity.

DR.. Clouston, Physician Superinten-
dent Of the Royal Edinburgh Asylum, in
his annual report, says: Balancing over
the summary of assigned causes, it is at
once seen that intemperance stands
out as by far the most frequent. 1t alone
caused forty-eight of the two hundred
and sixty, or about twenty per cent. ia
which the cause was known, and along
with other allied excesses for which the
patients had been themselves response
Bile, it accounts for seventy-two, or twen-
ty-eight per cent. of the cases. Much is
properly said about the prevention of
diseases nowadays. Most unquestionably
the sum total of the mental diseases in
our city might have been lessened by
that amount if the laws of nature had
been better obeyed. Fifty of the cases
thus resulting from drinking and excesses
being paupers, each costing s27 a year
to the public rates, over FL, 800 will have
been paid for one years production of
lunacy from very preventable causes,
and, of course, this takes no account of
the cost of the old incurable cases already
in the asylum from the same cause. /
am quite sure that intemperance was the
remote cause of the disease in more of
the cases; but, even allowing for these,
we can not put this down as accounting
in any way for more than one in four of
all cases of insanity. In assigning in
temperance as the cause of insanity in a
number of cases, two things must not be
forgotten. The first is, that the taking of
stimulants may not be cause at all, but
merely symptom of the brain disorder
and, as matter of fact, it is often one of
the early symptoms in many cases. The
second thing to be kept in mind is that
there are many cases in which it is the
real cause of the mental disorder; but
the balance had always been so unstable,
and the brain working so easily overset,
that a very little alcohol indeed will
bring on an attack Of. insanity in the per-
sons, Just as in those same people fright
or little overexcitement will upset their
sanity. This is the class of persons who,
in my experience, get upset by religious
revivals. The resetting and recuperative
power that is really an essential part of
a healthy nervous system, whereby the
effects of not too long continued overeat-
ing or overdrinking, overfeeling or over.
work are at once recovered from, is want
ing in these people. Nature provides
that short excesses don't do much harm
to healthy people. 1t is poor sort of
boiler that bursts whenever the exact
pressure needed for its daily work is ex-
ceeded. And before I leave this subject
l may mention that have not reckoned
in any way the mere drink craving or the
inability to resist it, as constituting in
sanity. I believe this may or may not be
a real insanity in different cases, but it
was from developed and unmistakable
mental alienation that all my patients
suffered. When the causes of the insani-
ty of our eighty-eight private patients
are compared with those of the two hum
dred and twenty-five paupers, the differ
ence is most striking, and entirely bears
out the general law already indicated.
Of those lightweight private patients,
mental causes produced the disease in
about thirty-eight, physical being only
twelve per cent. under them, while in the
paupers they were just one-third as
numerous. These facts tend strongly to
show that the higher in the social we go
the more strongly do purely mental and
moral shocks act in upsetting healthy
mental balance, and that those causes
operate more powerfully on the lower
classes of a town population than an
agricultural"