[October, 
606 Analyses of Books. 
Scotland and Ireland the increase is similarly alarming. This 
faCt is even more serious than it appears at first glance. If we 
find a certain number of deaths recorded as having happened in 
a battle, an explosion, or a railway collision, we know at once 
that the amount of the persons wounded or mutilated will be, 
under average circumstances, much greater. Just so here: if 
out of every 352 persons there is one decided lunatic, we may 
be quite sure that there will be two or three persons weak-minded, 
given to delusions, or easily led by impostors and quacks of all 
kinds. Is this not so? 
Dr. More-Madden does not enter into the general causes of 
this increase of insanity. But if we ask ourselves in what has 
there been the greatest change during the last thirty-five years, 
there can be but one answer — the increase of worry and anxiety. 
Part of this is due to intensified competition in trades and pro- 
fessions ; part to the examinational Anglo-Chinese system of 
education which we infliCt upon the young, the mischief of which 
appears chiefly in after-life, or in the next generation. 
Dr. More-Madden notes, as an especially alarming feature of 
the times, the increase of female lunatics. “ Formerly insanity 
was more frequent in the male sex, who, from their habits and 
occupations, were more exposed to the exciting causes of mental 
disease ; now, on the contrary, the increase of lunacy is even 
more marked in women than in men.” 
Among the causes of this change he enumerates “ the mis- 
directed or negledted mental and moral training too prevalent in 
the education of female youth [May we not add the foolish dis- 
position of the heads of boarding-schools to consider health as 
something ‘ rude ’ and ‘vulgar’?]; secondly, the undue stimu- 
lation of the reproductive functions ; and thirdly, the general and 
increasing tendency to alcoholism in women as well as in men.” 
This alcoholism, we must not forget, is one of the by-produCts 
of worry. ‘But there is more to follow : — “ Now-a-days women 
are not only liable to those special causes of nervous disorders 
which arise from utero-ovarian irritation, but in too many cases 
they voluntarily expose themselves to all the accidental causes 
of insanity to which men alone were formerly subjeCt. This is 
one result of that hopeless contest with Nature in which they are 
engaged who seek to unsex themselves by assuming all those 
masculine privileges and modes of life which are too dearly pur- 
chased at the expense of that increased tendency to cerebro- 
nervous disorder by which, in such cases, outraged Nature 
avenges her violated laws.” Too true ! 
