438 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



he admits that more women are employed in the mills than formerly, 

 and that this is most disastrous to the training of children. Some 

 curious figures have been published, showing the weight of children 

 at various years of age in the factory and agricultural districts the 

 comparison being greatly in favor of the latter. 



Another cause of deterioration mentioned is that at least one-half 

 of the boys in the mills from twelve to twenty years of age either 

 smoke or chew tobacco, or do both a habit most prejudicial to the 

 healthy development of the nervous system. It was recently ob- 

 served by Mr. Mundella that the lad who began at eight years of age 

 in a mine without education, and who was associated with men whose 

 whole ambition was a gallon of beer and a bull-dog, was not likely to 

 grow up to be a Christian and a gentleman. We may add he would 

 be very likely to end his days either in a prison or in a pauper asylum. 

 It is observed in a recent report of the Royal Edinburgh Asylum that 

 " such coal and iron mining counties as Durham and Glamorgan pro- 

 duce, in twice the proportion we do, the most marked and fatal of all 

 the brain-diseases caused by excesses." It may be stated that the 

 relation between crime and insanity, especially weak-mindedness, is 

 one of the most intimate character, both in regard to the people who 

 commit criminal acts and their descendants. Our examination of the 

 mental condition of convicts, and of their physiognomy and cerebral 

 development, has long convinced us that a large number of this class 

 are mentally deficient : sometimes from birth; at other times their 

 mental development being arrested by their wretched bringing up. 

 From the reports of the English convict-prisons generally, it appears 

 that one in every twenty-five of the males is of weak mind, insane, or 

 epileptic, without including those sufficiently insane to be removed 

 to an asylum. The resident surgeon to the general prison of Scotland 

 at Perth (Mr. Thompson) gives a proportion of twelve per cent., 

 founded upon a prison population of 6,000 prisoners. 



Having referred to the bearing of the habits of one large portion 

 of the population upon the manufacture of insanity, we pass on to the 

 consideration of the relation between higher grades of modern society 

 and mental disorder. It has been observed in institutions into which 

 private and pauper patients are admitted, that the moral or psychical 

 causes of lunacy are more frequently the occasion of the attack with 

 the former than the latter class. This is not always accounted for 

 as might have been expected by there having been less drink-pro- 

 duced insanity among the well-to-do patients ; for in the Royal Ed- 

 inburgh Asylum, where this disparity strongly comes out, there is 

 even a higher percentage of insanity from this cause among the pri- 

 vate than the pauper lunatics. The history of the daily mode of life 

 of many members of the Stock Exchange would reveal, in the matter 

 of diet, an amount of alcoholic imbibition in the form of morning 

 " nips," wine at luncheon, and at dinner, difficult to realize by many 



