TEE MANUAL ARTS 607 



neglects either aspect of the duplex organism with which it deals, the 

 results are bound to be unsatisfactory. 



Let us consider more specifically ihe contribution of the manual 

 arts to the attainment of perfect mental balance. Statistics are unani- 

 mous that insanit}', hysteria and neurasthenia are rapidly increasing in 

 all civilized lands. Xow, the newer psychological interpretations of in- 

 sanity are of the utmost suggestiveness for education. Originally, the 

 insane person was thought to be possessed of devils, cursed of God, etc. 

 Later the scientific studies in neurology led to the theory that insanity 

 in all cases is due to lesions of the brain : to actual degeneration of the 

 nervous tissues induced by hypothetical toxins of disease. This is de- 

 monstrably true for certain forms of insanity. But for a very large 

 proportion of insanities and for most, if not all, of that border-line 

 group designated in psychiatry as the psychasthenias, the theory of 

 lesions remains absolutely without positive confirmatory evidence. In 

 regard to these the belief is rapidly gaining ground among psychiatrists 

 that we have to do not with diseased tissues in the ordinary sense^ but 

 rather with disturbances of function which in greater or less degree are 

 amenable to correction by the so-called " method of re-education.'* 

 This system of therapeutics has already proved successful in number- 

 less cases of depression, hysteria and neurasthenia, and is believed by 

 America's leading authority on insanity. Dr. Adolph Meyer, to be 

 hardly less applicable to the form of adolescent insanity known as de- 

 mentia prcEcox. Recent extensions of our knowledge of this disease are 

 so pertinent to our theme as to warrant a brief discussion of it here. 

 Dementia prcecox is one of the most interesting forms of insanity for 

 three reasons. In the first place, it is extremely common, accounting 

 for some thirty per cent, of the total admissions to insane hospitals. 

 In the second place, it does not prey upon the old or mentally decrepit 

 and is not allied in any way with the diseases of immorality. Instead, 

 it attacks the youth, and not infrequently the youth of most marked 

 intellectual promise. In the third place, some of the newer studies of 

 the disease show that it is due to definite ascertainable functional dis- 

 turbances of the individual's mental evolution and that it will yield to 

 the right kind of educational treatment. As characterized by Dr. 

 Meyer, dementia prcecoT is " a miscarriage of instincts through lack of 

 balance " ; a deterioration of habits, " due to progressively faulty modes 

 of meeting difficulties." "We are informed further that it is most likely 

 to develop in the youth of the " repressive type," characterized by se- 

 clusiveness and what is likely to be taken for " depth of thought." It 

 usually involves fantastic day-dreaming, sexual imagination, brooding 

 over disappointments and (the most central s}-mptom) a discrepancy 

 between thought and action. As described by Dr. Meyer: 



