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not stand the storm so well as the oak, yet in its glass house the wind no more breaks it than it does the giant tree. So the weakness of youth and age must always be considered, in connection with questions of etiology, in relation to a full knowledge of the circumstances to which it is exposed. We should, however, expect that the type of insanity associated with different periods of life would differ, and that is actually the case. Children become insane. Wherever there is a mind at all, it may become liable to mental disorder. All the diseases which occur in adults, with the exception of general paralysis, have been observed in children. Idiocy, however, is the most common form of insanity in early life; and not unfrequently, where unusual manifestations of mental activity have occurred at birth, after the convulsions caused by dentition or gastro-intestinal irritation, imbecility has taken the place of the undue excitement of the faculties. Instances of insanity, however, previous to puberty, are rare. It is not uncommon in girls upon the appearance of the menstrual secretion, especially if it is delayed beyond the usual time for making its appearance. Insanity is most frequent at the age when man is at his best: from 25 to 50 is the stratum of time in which his activity is greatest, and in which, owing to the fact of his activity, he is most exposed to the exciting cause of the disease. "Man's first word," says Hare, "is 'Yes;' his second, 'No;' his third, 'Yes.'" And so the diseases of a life correspond to this process of thought. Idiocy is the absolute affirmation-the very acme of assent. Mania is a universal "No;" and senile dementia is the same blank assent again. Acute forms of mental disease in advanced life are rare. It requires strength to go mad.

8 41. Education considered in connection with the Causes of Insanity.-It has been usual to allude to education as a predisposing cause of mental disorder; and it is true that certain kinds of mental efforts are deleterious. But education is not simply learning to read. The most important lesson a man can learn in youth is to be healthy. Not always to be thinking one needs a pill, but to be thoroughly unconscious of the existence of a stomach, which, like one's friends, only obtrudes itself when it is going to annoy. That

education should not make a man clever and bad, is surely true; and that it should try to make him clever and goodwhich is the exact antithesis of insanity, which is bad and stupid beyond the reach of punishment-is surely the true function of education. But education only too often is conducted upon such universal principles that individuality is altogether overlooked; and very frequently tendencies which were latent, and might in time and with careful training have been eradicated, are made actual and living, and lead to insanity, by and through a pernicious system of education. [30 Education, properly conducted, might do something to make a compromise between the future and the past. Men inherit debts from nature which many have to pay with death, many with insanity. Education ought to husband and cultivate the assets, and too often it only hastens the end, which is on its way. This is not the place, however, to deal with the large and important question as to how far education might be made to overcome the influence of hereditary taint. Much, we feel certain might, with intelligence and judicious care, be done by means of a wide and sanitary culture. As to the best means of this, however, whether it is likely to be best accomplished, as several able educationists, amongst whom Mr. Herbert Spencer and Professor Huxley may be mentioned, by means of a training in scientific facts, or by means of books, as the world has by its practice affirmed, it is difficult to say; and even if the answer to this question could be given in a few lines, this is not the place to write them.

42. Hereditary Tendency.-This subject has already been dealt with, but it requires a prominence in the minds. of those who would understand the real science of causality in relation to mental disease, which will warrant some repetition. The fact of hereditary transmission has long been known to breeders and florists, and common people have well understood the transmission of physical beauties, physical diseases, and physical defects, from generation to generation; yet somehow there seems to have been a peculiar blindness to the fact that mental characteristics and mental diseases, as dependent upon physical conditions, must also be inherit

able. Lessing, however, with that prevision of science which is often found in poets, had perceived the irrationality of such a proposition, and one of the characters in his "Nathan the Wise" says:

"How! and shall Nature then have formed in me

A single feature in thy brother's likeness,
With nothing in my scul to answer it ?”

And now its truth would not be denied by any person of even trivial culture. Sir Thomas Browne has put the whole question well and quaintly in his "Religio Medici:" "Bless not thyself only that thou wert born in Athens, but among thy multiplied acknowledgments, lift up one hand to heaven that thou wert born of honest parents, that modesty, humility, and veracity, lay in the same egg and came into the world with thee. From such foundations, thou mayst be happy in virtuous precocity, and make an early and long walk in goodness; so mayst thou more naturally feel the contrariety of vice unto nature, and resist some by the antidote of thy temper." But this is not only true of vice and temptation, but of insanity and its occasions. By such inherited health, a man may walk through events which would cause mental ruin to many, and fear no evil: he may withstand most of the causes which would shake the mental integrity of most. In one sense, all insanity might be looked at as hereditary. To a man of perfect health, the world could have no cause for insanity. Causes for tears, causes for laughter, causes for exertion, and causes for rest, but causes for none of these in such excess as to wreck the mind thereby. It is the seeds of disease which are in one which grow up under tears, or blossom under joy. But there is a narrower sense in which the phrase hereditary predisposition is understood. Some nervous disease or insanity in the father leads to the same disease, or some similar disease, in the children. So powerful is hereditary predisposition, that in almost every case one can find that the taint has a history. It seems like a river that may dip under the earth for a while,

George Elliot, in her poem "The Spanish Gypsy," has the same thought unfolded into other words.

Hume said that his naturally happy disposition was of more value to him than a thousand pounds a year.

BR. INS.-8

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but will flash out on the plain of Time a little further down. But it is not insanity only that predisposes to insanity. It grows from slips as well as from the bulb. And epilepsy, hysteria, and neuralgia in the parent, are found to predispose to insanity in the children. Nay, more, it is certain that diseases which do not in the parent specially affect the nervous. system, as phthisis, scrofula, syphilis, do in the offspring, in so far as they conduce to a delicate nervous constitution, predispose to insanity. The question as to the hybridity of diseases, if we may so say, is one of much interest and importance. Like other hybrids, however, the prolificacy of the insane seems limited.

243. Statistics of Hereditary Tendency. As to the proportion of cases in which hereditary predisposition is observable, many opinions have been hazarded. Dr. Burrows says that he found an hereditary tendency in six-sevenths of his patients. Moreau argues that it is detectable in ninetenths of the insane. Esquirol stated that a predisposition to insanity is more readily transmitted through the mother than through the father; and Dr. Pagan' has observed that children born before the appearance of mental alienation in the parent are less likely to suffer from the disease than those born after the outbreak of the first attack.

244. Pregnancy considered as a Cause of Insanity.Pregnancy may be regarded as a predisposing cause of insanity. Many cases are on record in which insanity has come on during pregnancy in which suicide has been attemped; and in many cases the nervous irritability, and other peculiarities which occur in the course of gestation, have passed into one of the forms of monomania. Many women look forward with dread to the approaching confinement, which, together with the effect produced by the influence of [31 the organs of reproduction, is sufficient in many cases to bring on insanity.

1 Pagan's Medical Jurisprudence, p. 36.

245. Delivery considered as a Cause of Insanity.Delivery has, however, a better right to be considered as a predisposing cause of mental derangement. In the divisions of puerperal insanity into that which occurs during pregnancy, that which occurs at the period of parturition, and that which occurs during lactation, the greater number of recorded cases fall under the second of those three heads. At this period women are peculiarly liable to attacks of insanity. Frequently the form of insanity, or the kind of delusion, is in some way connected with, and dependent upon, the peculiar condition of the organs affected. In many cases the mothers show a strong aversion to see their children, and often the hatred is so intense as to prompt to acts of violence. The explanation of the frequency of insanity at this period, on the ground that the loss of personal charms, and the consequent extinction of the hope of being still the object of devotion as heretofore, may lead to morbid feelings through mortified vanity, which is given in some books, is absurd and unsatisfactory. Surely the physiological causes are sufficient to account for the predisposition which exists at this period. This seems borne out by the fact, that women at the menstrual period are more prone to attacks of mental disease than at other periods-a circumstance which probably is the cause of the physiological connection between the moon and lunacy. When lactation ceases, as well as during the time when women are nursing children, there is a tendency to mental excitement which frequently passes into insanity. Many women are insane at the period of giving birth to children, and at no other time suffer from mental unsoundness. The cure of puerperal insanity is very frequent, and we believe that, in good hands, no case of childbirth insanity would last more than a few months if it was treated in its earlier stages. All these physiological conditions which occur at delivery, during lactation, when lactation ceases, and at that period of life when the menstrual secretion stops, render women more susceptible to the influences of the exciting causes of insanity. To assert that the loss of good looks, and the sorrow of wounded vanity consequent thereon, have not any influence in predisposing to mental disease, would merely be to assert. But that it ought to be considered as a prominent proxi

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