The Wilmington daily Republican. (Wilmington, Del.) 1890-1902, 1899-02-14
THEY BREED LUNACY
DANGEROUS HABITS THAT MAY DRIVE
ONE INSANE.

velOp Into Mania and Then become
IncurabIc - The Morbid Fear of
Madness ana It's Result.
1t was Horace, the old Latin poet, who
proclaimed the really happy man to be he
who understood the causes of things.
And if this be true Of anything it is true
Of insanity. We are all of us liable, by
pursuing certain lines of conduct, to be-
como mad, and it Is important that people
should know exactly what those lines of
conduct arc.
There is n far too prevalent notion that
1t needs an overwhelming disaster to
throw sound man off his mental bal
nnce, and that, given health and brains,
one can afford to he very careless with
them. As a matter of actual fact. how
ever a man $ mental health may be upset,
as can his physical, by an accumulation
of little things, triiling in themselves, but
In the aggregate sufficient to mako him u
positive danger to society.
And among these "little things" are
habits. 1t seems really dreadful to reflect
that there are some two dozen Of these
which, perfectly innocent, will novorthc-
less, if adopted, render one insane, but it
Is So
First of oil there Is the reckoning
mania. Its effects are far worse than the
name implies, though its beginnings are
Of the slightest
In the first stage the person is seized
with a desire to count something. 1t
may even commence with his checking
the number Of PAGES he is taking or by his
adding up too lGany columns of figures.
Then, as the habit grows, his state gets
worse and worse. He can do nothing,
say nothing, think nothing without this
terrible desire to count coming over him.
Ii is impossible for him to follow any
occupation, and his conversation Is con-.
stnntly Interrupted by his attempting to
add something up, no matter what if it
Is only the pieces Of furniture in the room.
Very frequently it is not till tho last
aud most acuto stage that the patient
goes TO sec the doctor. Then, as q rule,
something very extraordinary happens.
The patient commences to state his COM
plant and then breaks off huricdly.
"Excusc NE a moment" he says, and
then when the physician notices that the
number of buttons on his waistcoat Gro
being counted he knows he hns creek
onrr" to deal with.
The fact that the reckoning mania is
almost incurablc and that its beginnings
are 50 exceedingly slight should make one
dOubly cautions of contracting it. The
patient will count everything, from chin
ney pots to raindrops and his mind is
always in fcrment of reckoning.
Another habit mania, and ono q great
man CONFERENCE.-THE wit. DIR. .Johnson-is
the tapping mania. With him it took the
form Of tapping every post he passed with
his walking stick, just as with the great
Napoleon the reckoning mania caused
him to count the houses in the streets he
drove through, two BY two.
Unfortunately, however, We have not
all the energy Of will and robustness Of
mind Of these two Titans, and the result is
that with ordinary mortals the tapping
mania is AIT t0 have terrible results.
Tic lengths to which it Will carry
man it is positively awful to contemplate.
Should it E%pp2n that he omits to tap or
touch the OBJECT as he passes by it he will
return to do so, ana he cpds by tapping
every object Of that kind that he secs.
The fact that oICG Il mans mind gets in
the habit Of dwelling on one idea or be-
comes obscsscd by it he is extremely liable
to 90 mad is illustrated by an cxtraordi-
nary case that, were it not vouched for en-
urimrrrhahlo scientific authority, one
would reject MS incredible.
A well to do retired man of business
made Il habit Of noticing the face and
features OF almost every woman he came
in cont ct with to sec if she were pretty
+, II A.,
him that On ono occasion, when he had tn
take Il railway Journey from London to
Manchester, the fact that he forgot to dis
cover what the London station bnrmad
was like SO annoyed him that he actually
Travelled back 10 town to discover. This
Is the clcareat case on record OF II man 90
ing mad from habit.
There is we'll substantiated case of
man who, inibued with the notion that
IS was an unlucsy number, could Lot
keep it out Of his calculations. Every
thing he saw, everything he was engaged
in, seemed to him to suitEcGt the fatal
number until at last melanChClia of the
most pronounced kind rendered him unit
to be ut large.
If you have over visited lunatic asy-
lum, you will have found al least one
lunatic who persists in walking round and
round morc or less accurate circle.
And if you had been able to trace out the
cause CT his insanity you would have
found out NEST probably that no went
mad originally through his seeing some
circular motion and feeling impcllcd to
initiate it.
II might have even been that hum.
ming top caused linn to get up and run