Insanity in England.

Te Aroha News, Volume XIV, Issue 2066, 8 January 1898, Page 2

Insanity in England .

Are we becoming a nation of mad men and mad women ?’ This is the question an Englishman puts to himself and his fellow countrymen after reading the last report of the Com missioners in Lunacy, who make the broad assertion that the proportion of insane people to sane people in the British Isles is every year getting greater. Lunatics are better cared for than formerly, but while their death rate has decreased the percentage of recoveries shows no progress. ‘ Hereditary influences; are put down in this report as the cause of 29'9 per cent, of the insanity among females, and 20.3 per cent in the case of males. Says the writer, who asks the question above quoted: ‘This is a very high percentage, and proves at once that our marriage system is utterly wrong. On the theory that the health of the people is the supremest law, hereditary insanity, like hereditary scrofulous disease, should be stamped out gradually by preventing persons so afflicted from ihe crime, or outrage, of marriage. There would, of course, be a great outcry against this, and the first to scream would be the State-paid clergy, who would marry lunatics, cripples, or anyone else —save that they came under that foolish old woman’s table which tells us that a man may not marry his grandmother’s aunt. Yet it is a common-sense view to take of the matter. In breeding horses or cattle men would never think of mating weedy little specimens, physically useless as workers or unprofitable as food. In our family arrangements we permit some poor fellow whose parents are in a lunatic asylum to marry a girl in a rapid consumption, and these two are to be the parents of the coming race. Many cases could be quoted in illustration of this view of the matter. It is this neglect of proper precautions which gives London its race of imperfect, dwarfed specimens of humanity, to die out in four generations. And this, again, fills our gaols, and hospitals.’