WORLD GOING MAD.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXV, Issue 10713, 2 October 1913, Page 3

WORLD GOING MAD.

ALARMING INCREASE OF LUNACY. No fewer than 7400 doctors, re- , presenting every part of the civilised globe, assembled in the Albert ■ Hall, London, on Wednesday, Augiist, l; 6th, at the Commencement of the ; / International Medical Congress. , Sir James Crichton Brown, presiding in the "Psychiatry" Section, remarked, in his opening address, that in almost all settled countries from which trustworthy statistical returns were available, the number of lunatics was increasing out of proportion to the increase of population. Various plausible explanations were advanped to account for the enormous increasej and mo doubt much of it had been due to more accurate registration and to the accumulation in the asylums of chronic patients. The disquieting fact remained, however, that the increase had gone on, while many of the best-recognised' etiological factors of insanity had heen, curtailed in their operation. There seemed to good reason why insanity should increase even in proportion to population in. a vigorous and expanding race, and that* it should increase at a rate so vastly in excess of the increase/in population, while a notable fall in the death-rate betokened an improvement in the general health of the people, and while a marked amelioration of tneir condition as regards feeding, clothing, and sanitation had resulted in a decided increase in the average duration of life, was well calculated 1 to create anxiety. ' Moreover, the diminished consumption of alcohol and the increased sobriety of the people ought to have been followed by a reduction in the number of cases of those forms of insanity in which alcohol''was the principal cause. It was clear that if some of the most causes of insanity had become less Jgtive than they were, other causes naa become more active, or new causes had come into play. The general health prospect of the country, Sir James further remarked, was brightening all round, but over the lunatic asylums there was a There was assuredly an urgent call for an investigation wider and more searching than any that had as yet taken place into the causes of insanity Hfßd their co-relations and incidence. ('Cheers.)