The Increase of Insanity. 21 



generally of omission rather than commission, and therefore 

 the more accurate methods of the last census caused an ap- 

 parent increase in the number of the insane, as of all the de- 

 fective classes. Thus this census will show in Massachusetts 

 one insane person to every 338 of the population instead of 

 one to 350 as before supposed. 



II. An apparent increase of insanity is caused by the 

 wider definitions of insanity given nowadays by physicians 

 in charge of insane hospitals. A wide range of diseases of 

 the brain and of mental and moral perversions is now called 

 insanity, which formerly would have been called nervous- 

 ness, or eccentricity, or wickedness, as the case might be. 

 Consistently with this theory an expert witness lately testi- 

 fied in the Guiteau trial that one in five persons on the aver- 

 age are insane. The effect of these teachings has been to 

 cause many persons now to be considered insane who form- 

 erly would not have been so considered. The disease or the 

 mental or moral perversion would have been there, but it 

 would not have been called insanity. The increase of insan- 

 ity from this cause is like the astonishing increase of some 

 cities, made on paper by taking in outlying suburbs. 



III, A very large apparent increase of insanity has been 

 made by the better care now taken of the insane than 

 formerly. The barbarous treatment of the insane which 

 lasted as the rule in Wisconsin down to about 18G0, when 

 the State Hospital was fairly opened, and after that in most 

 jails and poorhouses until after the State Board of Charities 

 and Reform began their work of improvement of those in- 

 stitutions in 1870, and which is still found in a few places in 

 this state to-day, tended to greatly shorten the lives of the 

 insane. Living in filth and squalor, chilled by frost and 

 fscorched with heat, given too little food and drink, shut in 

 dark, damp dungeons away from the healing beams of the 

 sun, they died rapidly. ISTow, under humane treatment, 

 with proper food, warmth, exercise and fresh air, the chronic 

 insane live at least as long as the average of mankind. 

 There is little in the mental disease itself to destroy life, and 

 people cared for according to the laws of health in hospitals 

 and county asylums are less liable to disease and death than 



