^-4 Insanity and its Difficulties, June, 
England differ from those of Cairo ? On looking further we 
find that the average consumption of alcohol is alike in the 
following countries Ireland, New York State, England, 
and Holland with Belgium, viz., 3 gallons per annum ; yet 
the lunatics are in Ireland as 1 in 500; in New York State, 
r in 780 ; in England, 1 in 713 ; and in Holland with Bel- 
gium, 1 in 1046. In Southern France the consumption ot 
alcohol (3^- gallons) is somewhat greater than in the places 
above mentioned, but the proportion of insanity is 1 in 1500 
—in other words, more alcohol than is taken in Iieland 
leads to exatfdy one-third the mental derangement. Spain 
and Bretagne are alike in their small use of alcohol (1 gallon 
per head annually) ; but whilst Spain has only 1 lunatic in 
7181 persons, Bretagne has one in 3500, or more than 
double ; more even than Italy (1 in 3785b which consumes 
exactly twice as much alcohol. 
Whilst fully recognising alcohol and its associates as 
ranking among the causes of insanity, we fail to see that it 
plays the predominant part which is assigned it by the 
leaders of the Temperance Movement, or that it is in any 
especial manner responsible for the fearful increase of mental 
disease during the last forty years. 
Dr. Beard, both from the observations of others and irom 
his own investigations, concludes that excess in narcotics 
and stimulants, sensual indulgence, &c., are powerless to 
produce insanity in any considerable extent. He has visited 
the so-called Sea Islands between Charleston and Savannah, 
—famous for their superior cotton, — and has there studied 
the Negro population, who have scarcely been brought into 
contact with civilisation, and who intellectually are little in 
advance of their African ancestors. He declares that £ ‘ All 
the exciting causes which philosophers have assigned as 
explanations of insanity, and of its increase in civilised 
countries, are operating there with constant and tremendous 
power. These primitive people can go, when required, for 
weeks and months sleeping but one or two hours out of the 
twenty-four ; they can go for all day, or for two days, eating 
nothing or but little ; hog and hominy and fish, all the year 
round, they can eat without getting dyspepsia ; indulgence 
of passions, tenfold greater at least than is the habit of the 
whites, never injures them either permanently or tempora- 
rily ; alcohol, when they can get it, they drink with freedom, 
and become intoxicated like the whites, but rarely indeed 
manifest the symptoms of delirium tremens, and never of 
.chronic alcoholism.” And what is the result of such lives ? 
Dr, Beard shall speak again “ There i§ almost no insanity 
