434 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



The subjects of crime and insanity have often been discussed 

 under a common title. In the law courts the plea of insanity is 

 often raised in defense of the criminal. A review of the treat- 

 ment of maniacs in past times, and criminals at the present time, 

 shows many curious analogies. For these several reasons let us 

 briefly examine the attitude of society toward these unfortunates 

 who are animated in their behavior by the possibly related con- 

 ditions insanity and crime. 



Insanity was formerly looked upon as evidence of demoniacal 

 possession. The idea that a disordered intellect could be the 

 result of physical disease of lesions of the brain was only 

 established after centuries of observation. In the mean while, 

 every torment that misguided man could inflict was frantically 

 suffered by untold thousands of chained and caged victims. 

 Now, thanks to science, a thin section of diseased brain may, by 

 means of the lantern, be projected upon a screen, so that audi- 

 ences of thousands can realize for themselves the pathological 

 nature of certain forms of insanity. 



Dr. Andrew D. "White, in his chapter on Demoniacal Possession 

 and Insanity,* says : " If ordinary diseases were likely to be at- 

 tributed to diabolical agency, how much more diseases of the 

 brain, and especially the more obscure of these ! These, indeed, 

 seemed to the vast majority of mankind possible only on the 

 theory of satanic intervention." 



It would be difficult to find a more ghastly page of history 

 than is embodied in the two chapters on insanity by Dr. White in 

 his New Chapters in the Warfare of Science. One becomes 

 transfixed with horror at the merciless and ignorant brutality 

 exercised in the treatment of the insane. Patients who required 

 the tenderest care and long-continued sleep were forcibly kept 

 awake for days to drive out the devil that was believed to pos- 

 sess them. Science, long thwarted by the Church, finally wrought 

 a marvelous change in the treatment of these unfortunate creat- 

 ures, by substituting gentleness, airy rooms, and sunny fields 

 for dungeons, exorcisms, prayers, and blood-curdling cruelties. 

 To one at all familiar with the external aspects of insanity, in 

 its various forms, it seems incredible that its physical nature was 

 not sooner realized. 



The writer has had some slight knowledge of insane asylums, 

 not only in America but in Japan, China, and Java, and in all 

 these places, with their different nationalities and consequent 

 facial peculiarities, one could easily recognize melancholia, de- 

 mentia, and certain other forms of mental disease. The asylum 

 at Buitenzorg, in Java, was of special interest, for here one 



* Papular Science Monthly, vol. xxxiv, p. 434. 



