168 On Insanity. [April, 



was considered to be singularly pernicious to those -whose minds 

 were gone. So fast a hold did this opinion take, that, having a 

 greater or less origin in an old myth, and belonging to the category 

 of witchcraft and demoniac notions, it lasted, and has persisted, at 

 least in name, until the present day. Moon-struck people are 

 lunatics, and are under the care of Commissioners in Lunacy At 

 present English science is committed officially to the belief in the 

 lunar theory of insanity, just as it was formerly to the witchcraft 

 and diabolical ideas. People still believe that the insane are worse 

 at the full of the moon ; and if the ideas of the multitude concerning 

 the causes of madness are examined with a little critical care, it will 

 be seen that they are founded upon tbe notions that bridged over 

 the dilemma, and upon a curious opinion which brings the Great 

 Kuler of all things, as the punisher, in immediate connection with 

 the suffering mortal. The mind makes the man, and brings him 

 in relation with his Creator. The perfect immateriality of the mind 

 and its entire independence of the body being common beliefs, the 

 particular influence of the Deity upon perversions of it is readily 

 accepted as a necessary sequence. 



Everyone must admit the overwhelming nature of the calamity 

 of insanity, but modern science has proved that it ought to be as 

 curable as other afflictions, or rather that a great proportion of the 

 alienated ought to return to their former healthy condition of mind. 



The influence of moral management and hygiene in increasing 

 the number of recoveries in acute mania, and in shortening the 

 duration of attacks, is perfectly evident, so that the ministry of man 

 has much to do with restoring the alienated. There is no doubt 

 that many become insane, and often incurably so, in consequence 

 of long- continued moral and physical sins, and such cases come 

 under the argument so ably elaborated by Bishop Butler. They 

 prove that " there is a kind of moral government implied in (rod's 

 natural government." Many suffer for the same natural sins, 

 but not in the mind, and become hopelessly diseased in important 

 organs. One class is as bad as the other, and yet in one series of 

 cases the mind is affected, and in the other the mind is clear, the 

 body being diseased. The immediate nature of the punishment can 

 thus hardly be sustained, and we are forced to recognize its influence 

 as operating secondarily and through certain definite physiological 

 forces. These stand up like the tower of Siloam, and preach much 

 the same sermon to the lookers-on. Were it not so, the ministry 

 of man would be in direct opposition to the Creator's will, and the 

 cures which follow the treatment of that insanity which has been 

 produced by immorality and physical neglect, would be anomalies 

 in the scheme of the government of the universe. 



The Asiatics reverence insanity just as they do idiocy, and 

 sufferers from it have been privileged since the days of David. 



