i8So.] Insanity and its Difficulties . 357 
ignorance ? Nay, without referring to what Dr. Beard has 
written in his “ Longevity of Brain-Workers,”* we find him 
in the memoir before us ranking among the means for pre- 
venting nervous disease “ the development of the intellect 
at the expense of the emotions, which is the tendency of the 
age in all highly civilised countries.” Again, “ We are made 
nervous and kept nervous through our emotions, and kept 
well by the activity of the intellect.” If so, why is “ the 
intellectual activity of the modern woman ” pronounced to 
be “ a potent and slightly considered cause of insanity.” 
If, as Dr. Beard fully admits, barbarians and savages are 
much more emotional and less intellectual than ourselves, 
and at the same time free from insanity, why should we 
expeCt to be freed from mental disease by a further repression 
of emotion and cultivation of the intellect ? How does this 
prescription agree with the recommendation given a few 
pages back, to return to the ignorance of our fathers ? 
Why, again, if insanity is so rare among the semi-savages 
and barbarians of inferior races, should it be — as we find it 
here stated — so prominently abundant among the poorest 
and most degraded classes of our great cities ? That their 
condition is more miserable than that of the savage we 
admit as decidedly as does Dr. Beard. Let us listen to his 
description of their lot : — “ Civilisation grinds hardest on 
the poor, for it deprives them of most of the pleasures and 
delights and healthful influences of barbarism, without the 
compensations that the higher classes of civilisation enjoy ; 
it shuts them up in houses, gives them bad air and bad food 
and all phases of bad environment, crushes them, and keeps 
them crushed by rivalry and competition, corrodes them 
with envy, and gives them what many barbarians cannot 
get, stimulants and narcotics in indefinite quantities at a mode - 
rate price and of the most possible easy access .” We have not 
space to quote at greater length from this passage, which 
deserves to be pondered over by every philanthropist, 
clergyman, physician, and, most of all, by every legislator. 
But we must ask, where in the condition of these classes do 
we find the “ brain-work,” without which the author has 
declared that no other agencies can make insanity common. 
We call attention, too, to the words we have italicised, 
which seem to convey a half admission of the alcohol theory 
of insanity. 
Dr. Beard’s proposals for a revision of our school and 
college systems are well worthy of attention. He is as 
* Quarterly Journal of Science, vol. v. (1875), p, 430. 
