Madmen and Madness at Rome. 
[October, 
592 
generally dissipated life, the effects of which, however, are 
not easy to estimate, since it almost invariably includes 
alcoholism. . f 
Curiously enough we find no remarks on the influence 01 
consanguineous marriages as a physical faftor in the produc- 
tion of insanity. Perhaps, however, the wise old law of the 
Catholic Church which denounced such marriages as inces- 
tuous is still observed in Italy, and thus Dr. Fiordispini 
may have had little opportunity of studying this part of the 
question. 
According to many physicians moral causes alone can 
never engender insanity, and where it appears either here- 
dity or some other physical cause must have been at work. 
Mantegazza even said that with a well constituted brain a 
man can never become insane. 
The question arises, however, in how far moral causes 
a dting upon the parent may be translated into physical 
causes — i.e., defective or otherwise morbid structure of the 
brain— in the child or the grandchild ? 
Among the moral causes which Dr. Fiordispini discusses 
is contagion or imitation. It is impossible, he holds, to 
witness for any length of time the spectacle of the intellectual 
aberrations, the delirium, and the extravagant convulsions of 
the insane without undergoing a painful and a more or less 
durable impression upon the mind. I his is an effedt ana- 
logous to that produced by reading sensational novels, 
accounts in detail of the deeds and the trials of criminals, 
or by witnessing a certain class of dramatic performances. 
The readers or hearers of such productions are led by degrees 
to repeat actions identical with or analogous to those the im- 
pression of which is deeply engraven on their minds. At 
the Manicomio at Rome among a staff of 327 persons 
engaged in watching and attending to the insane, 3 - q 8 per 
cent have been attacked with the same affection. This pro- 
portion is serious, as it amounts practically to 1 case of 
mental disease out of every 25 of these persons, whilst the 
proportion of the insane among the entire population of 
Rome is only 1 in 585. Hence in Rome the keepers and 
nurses in a lunatic asylum are 23 times more liable to 
become insane than are their fellow citizens, other things 
being of course equal ! 
We may here refer to Dr. Rambosson’s interesting re- 
searches on the transmission of moral phenomena by con- 
tagion, and to the opinion expressed by Dr. B. W. Richardson 
that the insane exhale an essence of madness which may in- 
fed* other persons by whom it is inhaled. 
