178 On Insanity. [April, 



ambitious, over-straining, untiring mental workers are the breeders 

 and intensiners of some of the worst forms of physical malady;"* 

 and it is very ably considered by the Commissioners, j who write as 

 follows : — " The population of England may be estimated in round 

 numbers of 20,000,000, of which 1,000,000 are paupers; and we 

 have thus the remarkable fact of an increase in asylum patients in 

 five years of 50-19 from the million of paupers, and of only 36 

 from the 19,000,000 of non-paupers. Making very liberal allowance 

 for the pauperizing effects of lunacy, and the consequent removal 

 of a considerable number of patients from the independent to the 

 pauper class, we are thus forced to the conclusion that insanity 

 is essentially a du : of the overstrained intellectual or emo- 



tional faculties, but of the depraved ho lily coalition which for the 

 part is dependent on insufficient or inappropriate fool, irre- 

 gular living, overcrowded dwellings, long-continued nursing, c 

 work, fever, or any similar cause of bod ty." They might 



have added the influence of want of mental exertion, and of hebeti 

 produced by the sameness of the mental surroundings : for a large 

 section of the human race dies more or less insane from prolan 

 stupidity. 



The number of the insane in Ireland should afford a very satis- 

 factory proof that the affliction accompanies, and is more or 

 produced by causes which relate to the general nutrition and vital 

 force, instead of those which have to do with exaggerated emotions, 

 intense mental work, and hard labour. 



The population of Ireland is steadily decreasing, and the agri- 

 cultural wealth has been on the whole increasing for the last ten 

 years ; but the condition of the agricultural class is very much the 

 same as it was fifty years since. The constabulary obtain very 

 exact returns of the numbers of the insane who do, and who do not 

 receive parochial relief : and thus the whole amount of mental alien- 

 ation may be determined very correctly. The returns made by the 

 asylums, workhouses, and gaols, taken with those of the constabulary, 

 and compared with the decreasing population, show a decided increase 

 in the numbers of the insane from 1851 to 1861, and that although 

 there has been a decrease in the population since 1861, there had 

 not been a corresponding decrease in the numbers of the alienates. 



Dr. MacCabe has given some very interesting statistics con- 

 cerning the county and city of TVaterford, which maintain a 

 considerable agricultural and a small urban population. He con- 

 siders the district to present a fair picture of an average Irish 

 agricultural district, the population of the city of Waterford quali- 

 fying a character that might otherwise be described as exclusively 

 agricultural. In 1851 the lunatics of ail classes in Ireland num- 

 bered 15,098, being in the proportion of 1 in 433 of the popu- 



* 'Journal of Mental Science.' October. 1869. f Report, 1869. 



