Causes of Insanity.

Horowhenua Chronicle, 17 September 1910, Page 4

Causes of Insanity.

AN EXPERT'S OPINIONS

Dr Frank Hay, in ihis annual report on the Mental Hospitals of .Yew Zealand, makes the following remarks under the heading of causes O'f insanity:--

"The causes of insantiy have been well epitomised by Morcier as heredity and stress in inverse ratio. Heredity—that is, the inherent tendency—may be derived' not only from insane ancestry, but pea-sons labouring wider allied neuroses, the epileptic, hysterical, nernsthenic, transmit an inheritance which, (riven the requisite stress, produces ii.sanity. Alcohol and some other toxins operating upon parents lower the ration of stiess necessary to produce unsoundness of mind in Uk- 'offspring. To effectually prevent the transmission of such heredity by Stale interference save by extending the definition of persons who may be brought under oversight, care, or control, is, in the meantime, outside practical politics and must wait that growth of public opinion which develops into reform. Wihten the public is really alive to t.he value of eugenics, perhaps legislative interfenence will not be necessary. As to the factor of stress, one has to aim at modifying inheritedl weaknesses in order to raise the ratio which can be borne without untoward result— a matter not so much of tempering the wind 'but of iliiardening the shorn iamb. Stress may he applied by the environment in the form, say, of financial disaster, poisoning by alcohol, and so forth, or it may generate within the system, as, for example, in the form of unaccustomed sensations of growth and decay associated with critical periods, or of poison produced' in or not eliminated from the body owing to physiological cinror or pathological changes. Commonly, many forms of stress act at the same time, act and react, till the searcher after causes finds himself in a labyrinth. To differentiate and disassociate these, and lead to the path which becomes simple when known, we look to the guide, the investigatoii in his laboratory. . . . Under heredity are cases in which no other cause was given or the other cause was quite inadequate. The physiological unfitness <.. the particular organism to hear stress is well exemplified. ... it will be seen that nearly 7 per cent of tbe women admitted .became insane through the performance of functions for which woman is anatomically and physiologically designed, and in ttlie performance of which the normal woman could not have her .reason disturbed."