No. 7. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 351 



In a recent year, there were admitted to the insane asylums of 

 New York State a total of 4,802 cases, and the cause isolation is 

 not once assigned in all this large number. 861 of these persons 

 were women in domestic leryice, 100 women in ''Educational and 

 higher domestic duties," 199 were women employed in sedentary 

 occupations and 205 had no occupations whatever. No farther in- 

 formation can be gathered from this report as to occupations. 



The Superintendent of the Kansas State Hospital, at Topeka, 

 writes in reference to the insane on Western farms : 



"I have observed the overworn statement, about Western farm 

 life causing an unusual ratio of insanity, with some annoyance, yet, 

 I suppose the newspaper and magazine writers will continue to 

 overwork it, as the occasion presents itself. Of course there are 

 more farmers and farmers' wives insane in the Western States, than 

 any other class, simply for the reason that Western States are 

 largely agricultural, and we have a very much larger agricultural 

 population than any other occupation. There is no foundation what- 

 ever in fact, for the erroneous statement." 



The following statistics are secured from a recent report of the 

 Topeka (Kansas) State Hospital: 



Total number of inmates, 1,001 



Single men, 433 



Single women, 122 



Married men, 221 



Married women, 225 



Farmers, 218 



Farmers' wives, 128 



Farm laborers (men), 147 



Domestics from farms, 14 



Daughters of farmers, 38 



Number of cases in which isolation is the assigned cause of in- 

 sanity: 



Men, - 3 



Women, 1 



The truth is, we are absolutely uninformed as to the brain lesions 

 which cause the greater number of cases of insanity, and we know 

 of no single specific cause or group of causes, which always bring 

 about psychic disease. It will be seen by the above statistics that 

 there are more men than women in our insane asylums, and about 

 one-fourth more single women than married women. There are 

 more than twice as many single men as married ones insane. In 

 the year above referred to, there were admitted into the insane asy- 

 lums of Pennsylvania, of wives, widows and daughters of farmers, 

 66 persons, of the same persons from merchants' families 61, yet 

 perhaps there are ten farmers' families to one merchants' family in 

 the State. In the same time there were admitted 139 farmers and 

 257 laborers, and 69 wives of laborers. These statistics certainly 

 show that farmers' wives do not fill the asylums. 



It is not true that farmers and their families live lives of solitude 

 without rational pleasures. It is generally recognized that a life 

 close to nature is good for children, that the country is the best 

 place in which to be born and reared; that it is the place in which 

 to spend vacations in order to recuperate body and mind; that it 



