Insanity: Its Causes and Prevention

by Henry Putnam Stearns

There have also resulted, for that class of the poor which has, in more recent periods, and in some cases by fortuitous circumstances, come suddenly into the possession of considerable sums of money, even greater evils than those experienced from poverty. There are many persons who get along well enough while obliged to live in the simplicity and continence of a laborious life which provides for them food and raiment, who, when possessed of the requisite means, will suddenly rush into wild excesses, and in a few years their nervous systems become poisoned and wrecked. This is especially the case in many of the new cities which have been springing into existence within the last fifty years, stimulated thereto by manufacturing industries. These cities provide the temptations toward, and the means of gratifying, physical excesses, and the influence of example serves to drag down thousands who might otherwise escape.

Moreover, the accumulation of wealth in these large places exerts an influence not only upon those residing there, but also upon the ignorant poor living in the vicinage, and serves to allure them to dangerous courses of conduct who have never learned that the violation of laws which should preside over and regulate their appetites and passions leads to death, or, what is frequently a thousand times worse than death, viz., a poisoned and wrecked life.

If the effects ceased with those primarily concerned, the mischief would be less: but, unfortunately for society, they pass on to the next, or succeeding generations, unless, as is frequently the case, through the operation of a merciful law there does not come another generation. We are told that the intemperate and the vicious will be shut out of the kingdom of heaven. We have only to observe that they are shut out of the kingdom of health while upon earth, and that the retribution of their works follows them with a surety, and often a severity, which can be fully realized only by physicians.

As illustrative of this point, I may refer to a class of laborers in some of the northern portions of England. When living on the simple necessities of life and obliged to practise the habits of frugality and industry, that form of disease which is termed “general paralysis of the insane” was almost unknown among them; but in consequence of physical excesses made possible and easy, by obtaining through labor combinations the means necessary, this most formidable and incurable disease has appeared among them to an extent hitherto unknown among any class of society.

Similar influences are silently working and similar results are following in a less marked degree in all our great cities and their vicinage, so that there are to-day in all the large hospitals for the insane which are located near these places, as indicated by statistics, more than three times as many cases of this disease as existed thirty years ago.

There is another class of the poor, or rather of those who are living in the conditions of poverty, and yet have, by virtue of hard labor and economy, succeeded in accumulating some property, which contributes a large number yearly to the admissions to hospitals for the insane. These persons go on year after year in one unvarying routine of labor and care, allowing themselves little or no change or hours of recreation. Perhaps I cannot delineate more clearly the courses of daily conduct followed by them which not unfrequently eventuate in insanity, or better illustrate the results of such a course of life, than by reciting a case from my yearly report for 1881.

Mrs. M., aged forty-four years, the mother of eight children, was admitted to the Retreat in the month of January, 18—, affected with acute mania. The husband, when asked if he could suggest any cause, or causes, of her illness, exclaimed with much animation that he could not conceive why his wife had become ill. “Her is a most domestic woman, is always doing something for her children; her is always at work for us all; never goes out of the house, even to church on Sundays; her never goes gadding about at neighbors’ houses, or talking from one to another; her always had the boots blacked in the morning; her has been one of the best of wives and mothers, and was always at home.”

This appreciative husband could hardly have furnished a more graphic delineation of the causes of his poor wife’s illness if he had understood them ever so thoroughly, and I allude to the case as a type of many, and to the husband’s statement as evincing how thoroughly ignorant many people, who may be shrewd and quite thrifty in worldly matters, may be as to the primary conditions of mental health.

This woman’s utter disregard of the simplest laws of health, had rendered her in her husband’s eyes chief among women, had raised her so high on the pedestal of housewifery, that he could not conceive how it was possible for such a model of excellence ever to become insane. If, however, she had committed a few of the sins which were so heinous in her husband’s sight; if she had gossipped more; if she had broken away from the spell of husband and children, forced herself from that ceaseless round of household care and duty; if she had taken herself out of the house, into the pure air and sunshine of heaven, even at the expense of much tattle and large gossip, and, if need be, at the expense of less cleanly floors and boots, and an occasional tear in her husband’s shirt, or her children’s frocks, the probabilities are largely indicative that she would never have come to the Retreat insane.

This case, so homely in its presentation, is one representative of many, especially of persons who live in the country portions of New England, a little more pronounced in character perhaps, and a little more exaggerated in detail, but, nevertheless, it exhibits how insensibly and slowly operate many of the influences existing among the ignorant, which ultimately land victims in institutions for the insane.