Vol. XIV, No. 10 WASHINGTON 



October, 1903 



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THE GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF 

 INSANITY IN THE UNITED STATES* 



By Dr William A. White, 



Superintendent Government Hospital For The Insane, 

 Washington, D. C. 



WHEN I was invited by the 

 National Geographic Soci- 

 ety to address the Society 

 on the geographical distribution of in- 

 sanity in the United States, my ideas 

 on the subject were extremely chaotic. 

 I had vague notions of the possibility 

 of formulating laws that would express 

 the relationship between insanity and 

 latitude and longitude, temperature, 

 precipitation, &c. , and I felt that a 

 diligent study of statistics would be re- 

 warded by the emergence of such laws. 

 Similar ideas, I think, would quite nat- 

 urally occur to any scientific man not 

 especially acquainted with the statis- 

 tical study of sociological phenomena. 

 Confronted at the outset by the fact 

 that the proportion of insanity varies 

 greatly in different regions of the United 

 States, what more natural than to as- 

 cribe such variations directly to the 

 difference in man's physical environ- 

 ment in these localities? 



From time immemorial variations in 



climate and in weather conditions have 

 been supposed to produce profound 

 effects upon man's conduct, and such 

 expressions as the ' ' depressing effects 

 of heat" and the "stimulating effects 

 of cold " are common in our everyday 

 conversation, and I believe that all of 

 us have a more or less clearly defined 

 idea that the physical and mental char- 

 acteristics of the different races of men 

 are to some extent an expression of the 

 effects of the climatic and geographic 

 conditions under which they live. This 

 general conception was particularly 

 fathered by that great English histo- 

 rian, Henry Thomas Buckle, who, in 

 the opening chapters of his "History 

 of Civilization in England" traces in 

 detail the effects of the four great phys- 

 ical factors — climate, food, soil, and 

 the general aspect of nature — upon the 

 characters of individuals and upon the 

 growth of races and the progress of 

 civilization. 



There has consequently been fostered 



Read before the National Geographic Society, Washington, D. C. , February 6, 1903. 



