Year: 1876

dent of an English Asylum.


DIR. Clouston, physician superinten-
dent of the Royal Edinburgh Asylum,
in his annual report. says: Glancing
over the summary of assigned causes, 1t
is at once seen that intemperance stands
out as by far the most frequent. 1t
alone caused forty-eight of the 26O, or
about twenty per cent. of the cases.
Much is properly said about the pre-
yention of diseases nowadays. Most un-
questionably the sum total OF the men
tai 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 drink
ing and e1cesses being paupers, each
costing G27 q year to the public rates,
over 81, 800 will have been paid for one
years production of lunacy from very
preventible causes, and, of course, this
takes no account of the cost of the old
incurable cases already in the asylum
from the same cause.


1 am quite sure that intemperance was
the remote cause of the disease In more
of the cases; but, even allowing for
these, we cannot put this down as ac-
counting in any way for more than one
in four of all cases of insanity. In as
signing intemperance as the cause OF in
sanity in a number OF cases, two things
must not be forgotten. The first is,
that the taking Of stimulants may not
be a cause at all, but merely symptom
of the brain disorder; and, as matter
of fact, it is often one of the early symp-
toms 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 mental
balance has always been 80 unstable, and
the brain working 80 easily overset, that
a very little alcohol indeed will bring on
an attack of insanity in the persons,
just as in those same people a fright or
a little over-excitement will upset their
sanity. Thisis 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 healthy
nervous system, whereby the effects OF
not too long-continued over eating or
over-drinking, over-feeling or over-work
are at once recovered from, is wanting
in these people. Nature provides that
short excesses don't do much harm to
healthy people. It is poor sort OF
boiler that bursts whenever the exact
pressure needed for its daily work is
exceeded. And before / leave this sub
ject I may mention thatI have not reck-
oned in any way the mere drinking crav-
ing or the inability to resist it, as con-
stituting insanity. believe this may
or may not be q real insanity in differ
ent cases, but it was from developed
aud unmistakable mental alienation that
all my patients suffered. When the
causes of the insanity of our eighty
eight private patients are compared with
those of the 222 paupers, the difference
is most striking, and entirely bears out
the general law already indicated.


OF those eighty eight 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 scale
we 90 the more strongly do purely men
tai and moral shocks act in upsetting a
healthy mental balance, and that those
causes operate more powerfully on the
lower classes of town population than
an agricultural.