THE INFLUENCE OF URBAN AND RURAL ENVIRONMENT 375 



provided for in state hospitals for mental disorders. While 

 to persons of sensitive and intellectual type, Hving in the 

 great city, the hurly-burly, racket, turmoil and press of 

 persons, the constant pressure of contacts neither sought 

 nor desired, the bombardment upon one's sensations through 

 all the senses of strong stimuli, even the mere physical 

 presence of streams of fellow-beings, the necessary rapidity 

 of reactions, all combine to cause a sort of spiritual fatigue 

 or social nausea, probably the great mass of people are 

 happier when going along in a crowd than when self-reliance 

 and independence are required and where lonehness is the 

 one great horror of their hves. If noise and crowding were 

 causes of disease, boiler makers, pneumatic drill operators, 

 traffic police and motor truck drivers should provide us 

 with abundance of chnical material, and the rate of mental 

 and nervous disease would mount rapidly as we enter the 

 homes on metropohtan thoroughfares where underground, 

 surface and elevated traffic vie with each other in one great 

 competitive inferno of noise and smell, speed and crowding. 



With the exception of those mental diseases which follow 

 alcoholism and syphilitic infection, diseases r,ecognized as 

 more frequent in the city than in the country there is no 

 evidence in the admissions to state mental disease hospitals 

 that the city offers a worse environment than the country. 

 In fact, quite the reverse conclusion can be drawn from the 

 reports of several of our states. Loneliness, lack of recreation, 

 the drudgery of farm and housework, the monotony of 

 life unrelieved by visitors or visits, all combine to create 

 disorders of personality and eccentricities of character 

 which lead to such extremes of conduct as to call for medical 

 protection and guidance among rural families. 



Like other elements of his most complicated and elaborate 

 being, man's mind and senses are apparently more apt to 

 remain healthy if they are in use than if atrophy or stagna- 

 tion are permitted. The confirmed city dweller may suffer 

 nervously from the eternal quiet of the open spaces, as 

 the country wife may find her head confused where the city 

 noises never cease. There may be effects of noisy hurried 

 city life upon heart, digestion, or other tissues and functions, 

 so obscure that we cannot detect them or isolate the factors 



