WHY PEOPLE GO MAD.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 185, 3 February 1912, Page 2 (Supplement)

WHY PEOPLE GO MAD.

THE CURSE OF HKRI-.DITY. ])r. Forbes, Winslow. the celebrated lunacy expert, writing to a Londdn paper, draws attention to the curse of heredity and to the alarming increase of insanity all over the country. He says: .

The alarming statement has recently been made that insanity is greatly on the increase in Loudon. The medical superintendents have just issued the reports of the various London County Council asylums with which they are connected, and we are brought faceVto face with the hideous but undeniable fact that 66 per cent., or two-thirds, of the lunacy in London is due to heredity. In other words, out of 27.481 registered lunatics confined at the present day in the London County Council asylums, there are 18,000 persons of unsound mind in these institutions who owe their lunacy to "the curse of heredity." There are 700 patients in these asylums.who are related to each other as parents and children or brothers and sisters.

This is indeed appalling. Many instances have come under my immediate notice which illustrate .what I have just stated. There is no disease in which heredity plays a more terrible but convincing part than in lunacy, and therefore my remarks will, in considering the subject, be confined to this alone. In a family of six, one died insane, two were placed in asylums, another—though not actually m confinement —borders on insanity. The remaining two are dead; of these two a sister died of cancer. The eldest brother of the above married; he left six children—three sous and three daughters. Two of the latter died of consumption, at about twenty years of age; the remaining daughter is delicate. The sons are well and free from disease.

MADNESS AND CONSUMPTION. A lady had five children, and has been for forty years insane. One boy died in childhood, three daughters died of consumption, one eon remains in good health. There is a certain correlation of morbific force existing, inasmuch as often the children of the insane inherit some collateral malady, as if there were a sort of interchange of disease. As an instance of this, I might mention a case of a man who .had suffered for some time from acute mania. On bis making a complete recovery from this, though there was no hereditary predisposition to it, he developed consumption as soon as the mental trouble disappeared. Again, I have known an instance of serious lung-trouble, which ultimately yielded to treatment, being followed by insanity. With these facts before us, the case I have just cited is by no means to be 1 wondered at: that a woman who had been insane for forty years should have children liable to consumption—or, indeed, to any other disease allied to insanity. I mention this to substantiate what I have already stated as to the correlation of morbific forces..

The principal forms of insanity which are inherited are epileptic mania, recurrent attacks of insanity, melancholia and mania. I might say that epilepsy, being a disease bordering on insanity itaelf, is ,as a rule, a sure inheritance. General paralysis of the insane, one of the most dreadful varieties of insanity we have to contend with, I do not admit to be universally inherited. In pronouncing such an opinion, we have only to examine the cause for this disease. We generally find some extraneous cause, which in no way can be said to he a blood disease, for children to inherit born before the attack became evinced.

WOMEN WHO SHOULD BE CHILD- . LESS. There is a far greater tendency for the mother to transmit insanity and epilepsy and with much greater frequency than the father. Curiously, we generally find that the madness of the mother is transmitted to the daughters, ft may be said that varieties of mental depression, necessitating asylum restraint, occurring in those whose parents have been insane are generally of a hopeless nature. It is a popular fallacy to think that an inherited malady is of the same nature as the one acquired. In some instances this is found to be the case, though not by any means universal. It is an alarming fact to have to chronicle, but in every way true and can be substantiated, that there are many women who have been discharged from lunatic asylums who ultimately go back into the workhouse again, so as to be deliver■ed of their childien. A short time after the mother will return to the asylum quite insane. She is once more discharged to her own home by the guardJans, and the same thing happens again; and so goes on the process of bringing insane children into the world—at least, those who are likelv to become so.

TERRIBLE CASES. There is one woman who was an inmate of a London County Council asylum in 1902, and remained there for six months. She had one child before being originally sent to the asylum, and after her discharge from (;he asylum she had five children—one born in LIO4, a second in 1906, a third in 1907, and twins in l'» 10. On June 5 of last year, after she had given birth to twins, sue was again sent to an asylum, A male patient became insane at the age of fifteen. In 1888 he was sent to Bethlehem Hospital. From that year to 1901 he was in and out of lunaiic asylums, the number of asylums being eight during this period. On his discharge in March, 1902, he returned home. His first child was born in April, 1904, during his residence at another asylum, to which he had been stTtt on October 5, 1903.

ANfAZIXf} STATISTIC-. He w;i n again incaicuiaU,! Hum January, HiOlj, to June, 1900, and on July 2 his second child was born, and a third on January 4, I<JOB. We find him again sent to an asylum in 100!) to May, 1910. Again during his residence in an asylum his fourth and fifth children (twins) were bom, and we trace him again to another asylum in February, 1911, and leave him there. In my experience, this is not really an unusual case. Between 1888 and 1911, or a period of twenty-three years, we have a history of a man who has been confined as a lunatic in twelve asylums, and during that period has become the father of five children. Conscious of the truism that "like begets like," what can be anticipated for this wretched progeny but a like fate, either a life of lunacy or degeneracy, which is on the borderland?

Nothing proves my contention more than insanity is inherited, to a larger degree than is generally admitted, than actual statistical figures. It is necessary to take one's stand on these, as there are a certain number of individuals who—in ignorance, no doubt, and possibly obstinacy—will deny the important fact of heredity. Out of 2246 cases of lunacy taken from 1043 different families, the mother and daughter were confined in 222 cases, or 111 pairs of lunatics; mother and son in 128 cases, father and daughter in 144, father and son in 104, brother and sister in 320, two sisters in 318, and two brothers in 210; in other collateral relationship in 270 cases. In 108 instances we find three of the same family insane, in seventeen instances we find four insane members of the same family, and, again, we find one instance of six and another of seven members of the same family confined as lunatics.

WHEN' MADXESS SHOWS ITSELF. I have shown sufficient from, statistical data to prove my contention up to the hilt. I knew a family; the father was an' ex-English judge, mentally shrewd, now deceased for many years. He married a lady who became insane. Two of the children were confined in lunatic asylums; the ones at large—at least three of them—only just escaped that fate. With the exception of two in the Church, the others had to be provided for and taken care of. The progeny of one of these, a clergyman of the Church of England, are degenerates in the strictest sense of the word. I could give many more instances, but these show the curse of heredity in a startling enough form. I would sum up as follows:

First, that the children of insane parents run every possible risk of inheriting the same complaint. Second, that by the statistics given it is shown that in the case of an insane mother her offspring is more likely to go mad than is the case with an insane father.

Third, that heredity in insanity is wont to show itself between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five.

Fourth, that the ordinary rules of hereditary transmission are from the parents uninterruptedly to the children, and from them to the grandchildren. Fifth, that if constitutional taint of any kind exists in either father or mother of iboth sides of the contracting parties, the curse of hereditary is sure to assert itself.

Sixth, that if this' is only on one side, or indirectly through collateral branches-, and the contracting parties are sound and in good health, the risk is but small.

Seventh, that the exemption of two whole generations from the inherited diseases of a certain family is more or less conclusive that the morbific force has expended itself. DRINK, INSANITY AND CRIME. As to intermarriage between blood relations and the possible risk, many opinious have been given. I should state that, provided both individuals are healthy and there is no tendency to hereditary disease, there would be no objec-, tion to cousins marrying. If consanguineous marriages were imprudently indulged in, they would play a conspicuous part in the degeneration of the human race.

In conclusion, I would state emphatically that, inasmuch as lunacy is hereditary, so also are drink and crime; that the children of chronic drunkards are either drunkards themselves or lunatics through heredity; that, in admitting in the City of London 66 per cent, ot all cases of insanity are due to heredity and 30 per cent, to drink, we have 9o' pev cent, to account for the causes of lunacy. Drink and lunacy march hand in hand, waving the flag of degeneration through the streets of our great metropolis on the banner of which is inscribed, -'Beware of the Curse of Heredity."