84 MARRIAGE AND DISEASE. 



liability to insanity amongst the people it is impossible 

 satisfactorily to account for this alarming and steady 

 increase in our insane ; while some others, equally 

 familiar with the subject, have endeavoured with 

 praiseworthy zeal to prove that this increase in the 

 numbers of certified lunatics in proportion to the 

 population is entirely due to the fact that persons 

 suffering from mild forms of mental derangement, 

 such as would have passed almost unnoticed a few 

 years back, are now admitted to asylums there to be 

 taken care of ; and further, that the inmates of our 

 asylums are now-a-days so well cared for that their 

 lives are considerably prolonged and they go to swell 

 the numbers of the registered insane years after they 

 would, under the older modes of treatment, have passed 

 over to the majority. 



In this way do some writers endeavour to account for 

 the terrible accumulation of lunatics which has been 

 going on for the past quarter of a century or more ; and 

 certainly the fact that most of the village fools and 

 eccentric wanderers so common in the last generation 

 have disappeared from their usual haunts, is proof that 

 in some degree the great increase in the population of 

 our asylums is in this way to be explained. But that 

 it can be wholly put down to this ingathering and 

 preservation of the " weak ones" has by no means been 

 satisfactorily proven, and I must admit that I go with 

 those who believe mental disease to be on the increase 

 in these countries. 



In support of this belief I would point out that if 



