REPORTS FROM THE SECTIONS. 343 
must be subtracted from the former to make these proportions of 
equal value in the two tables. This ill give nearly 10 per cent. 
as the English rate, and represents, I believe, fairly the proportion 
of insanity due directly or indirectly to this cause. LT attach the 
more value to these statistics because they have been collected by 
a number of independent observers, and are therefore free from 
the chance of error due to individual and unconscious bias which 
besets all statistics drawn up by one person. For some years past 
_ LT have read everything I could find to read on this subject, 
and have come to the conclusion that the effect of intemperance 
as a cause of insanity has been largely exaggerated. I put aside 
at once all that intemperance of statement which seems to be 
i m the habitual denunciation of intemperance In 
a ce 
class of mind drunkenness is the root of all evil, and some of our 
i an unconscious 
by the researches of Dr. Grabhan, of the Earlswood Asylum, Dr. 
Bucknill, and other writers. To quote the words of an asylum 
ysician in a neighbouring Colony, “intemperance 18 ® cause 80 
readily seized, so easily packed into a word, 
the notice of a patient’s family, his friends, or the public, that a 
few striking instances engross the mind, and unc 
for many a dozen others, which without obvious cause enter 
Unnoticed into the asylum.” In not a few instances in my 
€xperience, the intemperance stated to be a cause was really 
&symptom—one of the evidences of a loss of self-control—due 
to brain disease manifestly existent at an antecedent date to the 
ee ues 
strongest argument next to that derived from such yes sag 
= I lay before you, that intemperance is not so potent a cause 0! 
TE would ask what is your experience as medic 
the pathological condition of the habitual drunkard, and T. 
“% will answer that such cases die of liver and kidney di 
* apoplexy or of delirium tremens (a very different thing to 
sanity), but that they do not in any considerable proportion g0 
me oc The proliferation of connective tissue 1 one of 
