THE INCREASE OF INSANITY 471 



condition through both parents) it tends to be reproduced by 

 descendants. So also normality appears strongly dominant over 

 imbecility ; but, when the latter is derived through both parents, 

 normality, like black eye-colour, becomes less dominant and the 

 alternative condition tends to be reproduced to become patent. 



772. In every civilized country, during the last half century, 

 the number of persons registered as insane has increased out of 

 all proportion to the increase of the general population. For 

 example, in Ireland, " while one person in every 657 of the popula- 

 tion was registered as insane in the year 1851, the proportion had 

 risen to one in 178 in 1901. " l There is now one officially known 

 lunatic to 301.32 individuals of the general population as against 

 one to 335 nine years ago, and one to 536 in 1859." 2 "From 1st 

 of January 1858 to ist January 1908 the total number of lunatics 

 officially known to the Board . . . has increased from 5,824 to 

 16,288, showing an increase of 10,464. . . . Since 1858 the number 

 of lunatics under the protection of the Board has increased 180 

 per cent." 3 Opinions differ as to the cause of the increase. Some 

 of it, or most of it, is undoubtedly due to a more complete 

 registration. 4 But probably some of it is due to actual multiplica- 

 tion. 5 We possess no data on which it is possible to found a 



1 Macpherson, Edinburgh Medical Journal, May, 1903, p. 398. 



z Fifty-fourth Report of the Commissioners in Lunacy, 1901, England and Wales. 



3 Op. cit., Scotland. 



4 See The Fiftieth Report of the General Board of Commissioners in Lunacy for 

 Scotland, pp. 9 et seq. 



5 " Every one knows that a large number of the mothers of illegitimate children 

 are of weak intellect ; that their issue are frequently of the same type ; that a 

 large number of the habitual inmates of workhouses are of the same low standard 

 of mind ; that much of the petty crime of this country is committed by persons 

 below the average in intellectual power. 



" One of the Poor Law inspectors saw in a workhouse in Somerset, an imbecile 

 woman with an illegitimate imbecile daughter, who had her own illegitimate 

 daughter in her arms. Precisely the same picture has been seen in the County 

 of Cornwall, and these are but pictures in small of a fact which is to be seen in 

 very many of our workhouses. 



" But the ranks of the insane as well as of the imbecile are recruited from 

 the children of the feeble-minded. The fearful increase of late years of insanity 

 in this country has necessarily created alarm, and I cannot but believe that one 

 of the sources of this fact is to be found in the imbecility of the parents. 



Sir James Crichton- Browne entirely agrees in this view. He has written to 

 me to the effect that a terrible increase of insanity is going on, and that it is un- 

 doubtedly not merely due to increased diligence or improved diagnosis, but in 

 some measure to the cause named, viz. propagation of the weak-minded, and 

 ' I am confident,' he adds, that permanent provision for imbeciles of both sexes, 

 but especially girls, however costly it might be in the first instance, would 

 ultimately result in saving of the rates. In a word, imbecility, insanity, bastardy, 



