The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1886-07-28
agricultural.
T. H. HosklNs, M. D., Editor,
Newport, Vermont.
The Health and Sanity of Farmers.

latter word has come to mean health of
mind chiefly. The Popular Science
Monthly has lately discussed question
which has previously attracted consid-
cradle attention from sanitarian author
tiles, namely, that of " Insanity among
Farmers" The vital statistics of the
State of Maine show that there is a
larger percentage of insanity in the farm
ing class than in any other, and the pub
LEGATION of this fact has excited general
surprise. The popular presumption is
that farming life, through its freedom
from daily excitement and mental stress,
its outdoor life, that favors vigorous
bodily exercise, keen appetite and
sound digestion, ought to contribute a
smaller per cent of insane persons than
city life, that includes so many restless
brain-workers of all sorts. But this
presumption springs, we believe, from
a fundamentally wrong conception of
the origin and nature of insanity. Ex-
Guiding the comparatively few cases of
mental alteration which have their ORR
gin in actual disease of the brain and
its nervous extensions, what is called in
sanity has its chief cause in what is
called egoism that is, in too much
thought about ones self, and a too high
estimate of self. A solitary life favors
this tendency. 1t favors a brooding
habit of mind, turning inward of the
thoughts, the consequence of which is
often morbid growth of vanity which
is unchecked by the constantly forced
comparison, and self-measurement
against others, entailed by the close
personal relationships of village and
city life.
The young people growing up upon
our farms have not 1.-THE of the oppor-
tunities to get the conceit taken out of
them which are so abundant elsewhere.
This conceit, when joined with vigor-
Gus bodily health, will produce the
popularity, oddly and positiveness
which marks the old-fashioned farmer.
But in feebler constitutions, subject
for that reason to indulgence, and often
converted into permanently ailing
state by the monotony of the ordinary
farm diet, unsuited to delicate or
ganization, the brooding habit is most
unhealthy fostered. To this are added
the effects of pernicious habits early
and easily formed and hard to be
abandoned, which directly lead toward
a morbid state of the nervous system.
All this is accompanied with vagaries
of thought, tending almost inevitably
toward the forming of eccentric mental
habits, and verging more and more
toward the condition in which magma
ton gets the mastery over perception,
and the individual is recognized by
those around him as of unsound mind.
In almost every case this unsoundness
shows itself in an exalted self-estimate,
rising from a mere desire to tyrannize,
which makes so many heads of families
hard to live with" up to the more
and more marked decisions in which
the sufferers, if men, fancy themselves
immensely rich, or in high official
station, or in those of religious associ-
ations, claim to be prophets or gods,
and among women are shown in the
assumption of nobility or regality.
Sometimes the reverse effect is pro-
duced, and diseased despair takes the
place of vanity or pride. But in both
the observing student of mental states
will alike trace the faint of egoism and
easily discerns that the thoughts of the
patient are self-centered, and that it is
nearly or quite impossible to get him
interested in anything outside of his
own sensations and thoughts. The
first hopeful symptom is when this be-
comes possible, even in slight degree {;
and the process of cure, aside from
bodily sanitation, is in encouraging and
ucNcloplhS ny ali dNdlldpic Hicliiouo d
health-giving altruism," or interest
in others-in short, in diverting and
drawing away the mind from self. I'm
fortunately this is possible in but COM
paratively few cases, and it is this fact
which places well-developed insanity
among the most incurable diseases.
In all cases where it begins to be sus-
pected, therefore, every effort should be
made to draw away the sufferers
thoughts from self, and interest them in
things outside of self In this way the
friends of those verging toward insanity
may do much, when in short time the
most skillful attention of a medical
alienist can do little or nothing. II
is especially important to check the
brooding tendency at the start, before
it becomes fixed.
Right here is where we may see the
Importance of enriching farm life by
broadening the education of the you'll
of the farm, by instructing them in thu
natural sciences, and in this way rem
dering their daily life and their dali,
work attractive by making it interesting
FVNN