Daily Los Angeles herald., 1881-12-11
WHAT IS INSANITY

IN. Y, Graphical

N. Y. Graphic.l
Have the "experts" who test in-
sanity and who watch Guiteau so
narrowly ever studied their own
mental states or conditions with
reference to this matter? Would
not q proportion of people thor
oughly honest with themselves be
willing to acknowledge that there
have been times when they were
half crazy or one-third crazy or
one.eig hth crazy? How many
people ought TO be thoroughly con .
fident of perfect mental sounduess?
Does not every decade show the
fallacy OF some long held agreea-
BILE or dissgreeable delusion, which
in the past we have believed in and
which has influenced our acta and
our lives?
Is insanity punishable Ger
tainly it is. It 10 punished among
us every day. Men are born with
extremely irascible tempers, sour
tempers, sulky rempers and ugly
tempers, who in their contact with
the world are only as civil as the
world compels them to be. At
home, fearing little or no check,
they maltreat their wives by
manner or by fist. They are in
various degrees insane and are oc
casienally punished for their acts.
The patient in the insane asy.
lum is controlled by fear and by
authority, and is ameaable to it.
| So are the uDcopfned patients out.
side.
A portion of the confined insane
have skill in certain directions and
use it. They sew, they knit, they
work in the garden, and would be
able to do much more were proper
opportunities afforded them.
Insanity, too, under asylum
treatment, is in lis main phases
made accountable for it's acts. Un.
ruly patients ors confined Oh
threatened with penalties, and
they understand this quite well
enough and govern themselves nc.
cordingly.
Here the confined ana uncon.
fined insane patient meet on com.
mon ground anA are amenable to
the same corrective influences,
One class, society can bear to man.
age with outside of prison walls,
and the other it cannot.
May not, then, the limit of un-
confined insanity be drawn where
society finds it necessary to protect
itself from the patient?
Are not thousands born with in.
herent and inherited mental a.
well as bodily disease? Are not the
two closely allied? Are there rot OF
these deficiencies thousand de-
grees and shadings?
One person is born with just suf-
ficient will, judgment, discretion,
and general common sense to be
barely able to get on in The world
He is termed "simple," "reck less
a "Ge'er do = weIP' or "half.
witted.u
Another is born still less pos.
sessed of those qualities, cannot
get on ut all, and is cared for by
friends and is placed in all asylum
Another is born with q mark ee
degree of skill or talent in some
special calling, but so entirely de-
1cient in common prudence an(
discretion as to fail to apply his
ability properly, and therefore t6
remain all his life in pauperism OF
on its verge.
Why not catalogue all These
among the manifold shades of in.
sanity?
Grant, then, that mental all.
ments and defects may exist ir
many forms and degrees; gram
that what goes under the current
name of "inssnity" is but the ex.
tremer type of such ailment; grant
that like Hamlet's a brilliant mine
may become morbidly turned, OBJ.
scured and diseased in some certain
direction while retaining Its full
powers in others; grant that men
tai defect may grade all the way
from full ability to detect its fail
ings and govern and seek to cor.
rect them, down to partial OBSCURE.
| ty and partial lack of control
down still farther to almost com.
plete obscurity and lack of con.
troll, down farther yet to total OBJ
security and control, where the
light of reason is completely
ouenched in idiocy or madness
and it does seem that there was
furnished a key to the solution OF
this problem and something sug-
costing the future rational basis
for the treatment of mental mala-
dies.