1870.J 



On Insanity. 



175 



fcions have raised a vast number into the lower middle class, and have 

 excited increased mental activity and its corresponding anxieties. 

 The mercantile world has passed through great ordeals, and wealth 

 has been unusually uncertain during the last lew years. There 

 is hardly a small circle of acquaintance that cannot tell of some 

 ruin amongst people who have been prosperous ; and the details of the 

 results of the immoral conduct of " financiers " abound with lists of 

 the well-educated who have to put up with the greatest privations, 

 and whose mental sufferings can better be imagined than expressed. 

 According to the popular idea the increase of insanity should have 

 been found amongst the middle and upper classes, and the private 

 asylums should have received an unusual number of patients of late. 

 The following Table, taken from the last Report of the Com- 

 missioners in Lunacy, is singularly corrective of the popular idea, 

 and confirmative of those opinions which connect insanity rather 

 with defective constitutional vigour and a low state of the nutritive 

 functions than with increased mental strain and anxiety. 



Increase of Private and Pavpee Patients in the Asylums op England 

 from 1863-67. 



Total X umber of. 

 Year. Pauper Patients 

 I on 1st January. 



Increase during 

 the Year. 



Total Number 

 of Private 

 Patients on 

 1st .January. 



Increase during 

 the Year. 



1862 20,949 



1863 21,998 



1864 22,958 



1865 23,763 



1866 24,995 



1867 25,998 



1049 



960 



805 



1232 



1003 



5250 

 5340 



5327 

 5177 

 5277 

 5286 



90 



- 13 



-150 



100 



9 



Increase in 5 years 



5049 





36 



It will be seen that there is a steady increase of our pauper 

 lunatics, at the rate of about 1000 a year, whilst there are only 

 thirty-six more private patients in asylums than five years ago. The 

 increase of the general population has been great, yet the small 

 number of 36 when placed en rapport with its numbers amounts to 

 nothing as regards increase, and infers a decided decrease. 



The Table is carried on in the Eeport up to 1868 and 1869, 

 and the number of pauper lunatics admitted into asylums in those 

 years was 27,363 and 28,728 respectively. But this return does 

 not refer to all the pauper lunatics ; for the workhouses contained 

 7963 lunatics in 1859 and 11,181 in 1869 ; and there were 5798 

 insane paupers in 1859 living with their relatives, and 6987 in 

 1869. Thus the whole pauper lunacy of England and Wales 

 amounted to 31,782 cases in 1859, and to 46,896 in 1869. The 

 population in 1859 amounted to 19,686,701, and in 1869 to 



