CAUSES AND PREVENTION OF INSANITY. m 



development is premised at least by certain recent studies, especially 

 those of Hodge on the influence of fatigue, and of Van Gieson on the 

 eftects of exhaustion and intoxication upon the nervous elements. 

 (See also Peterson, op. cit.) In no sense can parents be said to Kve 

 for themselves chiefly. Always the influence of their own health, 

 happiness, and prosperity upon their children should be remembered, 

 and should be made as constructive as possible. That this can be 

 consciously attempted with commensurate results is more or less 

 evidenced not only by common observation but by investigation. 

 Not, however, in the sense that parents are always able to endow 

 children with some particular, much-wished-for characteristic, as so 

 many suppose — for it must be remembered that perhaps pretty fixed 

 tendencies for several generations may have to be overcome and re- 

 versed before such special results can be obtained, but in the much 

 better sense of giving such an impetus healthward and strengthward 

 and lifeward as may later on be the beginning of a constitutional 

 foundation that shall support many generations of full health and 

 longevity. 



If, then, the first steps — and, generally speaking, the most impor- 

 tant steps — are discovered in the unphysiological marriage and its 

 influence upon the bearing and rearing of progeny, then it is obvious 

 enough that prevention of incurable insanity should begin with giv- 

 ing adequate attention to this phase of the subject, and this first and 

 emphatically. Already the law says that certain peculiarly afilicted 

 individuals can not marry; and probably this is about as far as the 

 law can helpfully go until, at least, public intelligence as well as 

 private sentiment will sustain it in going further. So we must look 

 to these latter — a widespread intelligence and a corresponding earnest 

 sentiment founded upon such intelligence — ^for the means of making 

 progress toward the prevention of insanity. But how can this needed 

 knowledge and helpful sentiment come to be? Certainly not by 

 perpetuating the present notions of so-called " modesty " and " pu- 

 rity," which, as now held, must always interfere with the study and 

 practice necessary for ascertaining the truth, and for applying it to 

 the needs of race-building. The time ought to come soon, very soon, 

 when matters of such serious content shall not be so absolutely sub- 

 ject to the dominance of conventionality and guesswork and reck- 

 lessness as now, but shall instead be subject to the sway of accurate 

 science and its careful adaptation to human conditions. Every mar- 

 riage now is at best but an experiment — blind and chance-taking 

 often, in a most wasteful and dangerous sense. Let it remain, if it 

 must, an experiment still, but one which shall be henceforth conducted 

 with such foresight and skill, and withal with such intelligent pur- 

 pose, as shall certainly point to improved results from generation to 



