544 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



observations it seems as if the scallop might be fit for market in 

 the winter after it is two years old, but not before. How long it 

 may live after that it is impossible to say, further than to judge 

 by the age of oysters and other animals that may attach to the 

 shell of the living scallop, and it is more than likely that their 

 attachment may cause its early death. Blackfish (tautog) eat 

 them, the sheepshead crunches them, and they are often taken 

 from the stomach of the cod and other fishes. The starfish, that 

 devourer of all the shell-bearing mollusks and great enemy of the 

 oyster, destroys them from the time the shell begins to form until 

 the limit of growth is attained, and never desists while life is 

 left in this interesting and useful bivalve. 



EPIDEMICS OF HYSTERIA.* 



Br Dr. WILLIAM H1ESCH. 



IT is a pretty widespread opinion that nervous diseases, and 

 especially hysteria, have alarmingly increased during the last 

 decades, and that they are about to increase much more. In all 

 civilized countries, we are told, and in every stratum of the popu- 

 lation, a weakness of the nervous system manifests itself of which 

 our forefathers had no knowledge. Neurasthenia and hysteria 

 spread wider and wider, like a devastating epidemic, attacking 

 not merely the lower classes but just the " upper ten thousand." 

 It is educated society which is threatened with total overthrow 

 by utter derangement of the nerves. " Whither is this to lead, 

 and how is it to end?" lament some solicitous prophets who 

 already see yawning before them the gulf by which the enervated 

 human race is about to be swallowed up. 



Let us weigh the reasons which occasion this apprehension. 

 What real proof is there of this enormous increase of nervous 

 diseases and of the continually progressive degeneration of civil- 

 ized man ? First of all, there are the statistics. " Numbers/' we 

 have been told, " can not lie." Perhaps not ; but those who col- 

 lect them may fasten upon them very seriously mistaken labels. 



The assiduous statistician ascertains that the insane asylums 

 contain more women than men. So far, so good. But if he tells 

 us that more women are insane than men, he labels those num- 

 bers erroneously, for the inequality is really due to the fact that 

 insane males die off, while insane females survive, relatively 

 speaking. Suppose the statistics of different countries do show 

 that the number of inmates of insane asylums is increasing out 



* From Genius and Degeneration. In press of D. Appleton & Co. 



