806 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



of the blood. The bite of poisonous animals has often a similar ef- 

 fect. The most frequent predisposing cause, however, is want of sun- 

 light and out-door exercise. Jaundice and chronic melancholy are 

 often concomitant affections, and both a penalty of our dreary, sedent- 

 ary modes of life. The ancients, indeed, ascribed both complaints to 

 the same cause, for melancholy is derived from a word which means 

 literally " atrabilious," or black-biled. But the truth seems to be that 

 functional disorders of the liver are the result rather than the cause 

 of a general torpor of the vital process. Remedy outdoor sports, 

 combined with as much fun and sunshine as possible. Alcoholic 

 jaundice-cures may restore the ruddiness of the complexion by keep- 

 ing the system under the influence of a stimulant fever ; but we 

 might as well congratulate ourselves on the return of health when 

 pulmonary affections mimic its color with their hectic glow. 



Mental Disorders. The Lalita Vistara says that on the day 

 when Buddha, the savior, was born, all the sick regained their health 

 and the insane their memory. Insanity might, indeed, be defined as 

 a partial derangement or suspension of the faculty of recollection. 

 Nature takes that method of obliterating the memory of impressions 

 which the soul is unable to bear, and thus preserves life at the expense 

 of its intellectual continuity. Lunatics are generally monomaniacs / 

 their judgment may be sound in many respects, but, at the mention 

 of a special topic, betrays the partial eclipse of its light. It may be 

 possible that people have been killed by the sudden announcement of 

 good news, but, for one person who has lost his reason from an excess 

 of joy, millions have lost it from an excess of sorrow a crushing ca- 

 lamity, or the oppressive and at last unbearable weight of the dreari- 

 ness, the soul-stifling tedium of modern life in many of its phases. 

 The sick soul may have stilled its hunger with a long-hoarded hope, 

 till the evident exhaustion of that hoard leaves only the alternative of 

 despair or refuge in the Lethe of dementation. Where insanity is at 

 all curable it can be cured by the removal of its chief cause sorrow ; 

 and the best remedies are kindness, mirth, and a pleasant occupation. 

 In the middle ages, when both lunacy and the love of earthly happi- 

 ness were ascribed to the machinations of the devil, lunatics were 

 chained and horsewhipped for the double benefit of their souls, and 

 with results which almost justified the demon hypothesis. Breughel's 

 best illustrations for Dante's hell were made after studies in an Aus- 

 trian mad-house. The extreme antithesis of such infernos is perhaps 

 the State Lunatic Asylum at Tuscaloosa, Alabama, where the shadow 

 of gloom has been so successfully banished that the happiest results of 

 the cure have almost been anticipated by its methods : the restora- 

 tion of reason itself could hardly give the patients an additional rea- 

 son for being happy. They Tiave a park, a flower-garden, and a pet 

 nursery of their own ; they have books and music, gymnasia, bath- 

 rooms, and amateur workshops. Wherever their road leads, they can 



