LEARNED, BUT INSANE.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXV, Issue 4655, 30 January 1924, Page 4

LEARNED, BUT INSANE.

(By a Physician in the Overcvas Daily Maili, Some surprise has been expressed in connection with a case recently before the courts that an imbecile should be at the same time a learned man. The ordinary view of the individual of deficient or deranged mentality is that he is incapable of dealing with all branches of life and knowledge. While this is true of the idiot and lower-grade imbecile, it is not true Jf the better type imbecile or of many persons who become insane in latre life. In these latter the fault is irregularity of intellect rather than want of it.

As a young medical officer in an asylum I received a sharp lesson on this point from my chief. Having discovered that I was inclined to take up the attitude that the insane were of low general intelligence, he persuaded me to play chess with an Elderly patient. I. was soundly beaten, and better acquaintance with my conqueror taught be that this man, who was undoubtedly, insane, wrote quite good verse, composed music, and was for many years a constant contributor of chess problems to the chess, column of a newspaper.

On the other side of this question must be placed the fact that “learnedness” is no proof of high intellectual. development. ■ Many imbeciles are capable of performing considerable feats of memory. They only give evidence of their mental degeneracy when they are called upon to display inventiveness or to form a judgment. To this class belong many of the musical and mathematical prodigies, but perhaps the classical case is that of the boy who was able to do astonishing feats in mental arithmetic and yet was incapable of looking after himself in any way.

Memory which reproduces, intact and without any. addition, the work of others is in gome ways the lowest of mental faculties. • It is for this reason that the man who has had .i distinguished academic career often becomes a failure in', life. His mentality has never really been tried out until he emerges into, the world ami is called upon to do> rather than to remember.