[October, 
2go Madmen and Madness at Rome. 
work it appears that at Rome for every 100 insane men 
there are only 58 insane women. The reason of this 
difference is that at Rome, thanks to the education which 
they receive, the women observe greater discretion, and 
especially avoid that alcoholism which is one of the principal 
causes of madness. 
Dr. Fiordispini gives a table of the proportion of insanity 
in different nations. From this we learn that Italy as a 
whole is still in a better position than England. We have 
1 insane person to 514 ; Italy has only 1 in 1000. But in a 
table given in 1857 in the “ Alliance Prize Esssay,” by Dr. 
F. R. Lees, the proportion of lunatics in Italy is given as 
only 1 in 3785. Consequently since that date (or from a 
somewhat earlier one, since the statistics given by Dr. Lees 
may have been collected a few years earlier) insanity has 
increased in nearly a four-fold ratio. Our position has also 
retrograded but in a less proportion, since in 1857 we had 1 
insane subjedt in every 713 persons. 
There is one point alike in the tables of Dr. Lees and in 
those of Dr. Fiordispini which is perplexing. According to the 
latter authority Belgium has the smallest proportion of insane 
persons of all the countries which he mentions, namely 1 in 
1014. Dr. Lees gives the proportion as 1 in 1046. Now 
the circumstances prevalent in Belgium are those which are 
generally considered favourable to mental derangement Its 
consumption of alcohol per head is equal to that of England ; 
its sexual immorality has been of late years painfully forced 
upon our notice. It has contested elections and even riots 
between Catholics and “ Liberals,” and lastly it is steeped 
to the very lips in commercialism, greed, and competition. 
Yet with all these circumstances it has a smaller proportion 
of deranged persons than any nation in Europe if we except 
Spain. This is a riddle to which we invite attention. 
Returning to Dr. Fiordispini’s report : — He classifies the 
causes of insanity as organic or physical, and as moral, the 
former being by far the more powerful. 
In the first place he ranks alcoholism. The number of 
persons who have drowned their reason in wine (used here 
as a generic term), according to an expression too cruelly 
true, has been increased more than three-fold since 1873, 
and 'it is to be believed that it will go on augmenting. Not 
merely Rome but all other countries present an analogous 
increase of alcoholism. Up to 1870 Rome had lagged in 
the rear of the civilising movement of what is commonly 
known as progress. 
Under the Government of the Popes theie were certainly 
