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308 INSANITY, PAST AND PRESENT.
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Qp Insanity, Like Other Diseases, Change...
This allusion to _ShakesjDeare leads one to consider for a moment tlie ail-but inspired insight he had into the causedevelopment and
, complexion of mental disorders . He was the first master mind among the moderns who dared to enlist our sympathies in behalf
of those afflicted by insanity . With the single exception of Lady Macbeth he has made the sufferers the unoffending victims of
adverse fortune , rather than as punished by extraordinary judgments for extraordinary crimes . With that intimate knowledge of human
nature for which he stands unrivalled , he has made our best affectionswhen uncontrolledthe chief sources of derangement . In
Lear , we see the noblest fe , elings that can actuate the monarch and the father the cause of his lunacy . In Constance it is the mother
bereaved of her offspring . In Ophelia , the sweetest of all the poet's creations , it is the pure-minded maiden broken-hearted by the wild
conduct of him whose noble intellect is even also dimmed by " grief , revengeand love contending . " And withalwhat < e a gracious
, , pity" he makes all those feel who are brought into immediate contact with the sufferers ; how opposed to the common parlance
which even we employ ? He does not treat them as objects for scornfor mockingbut rather in the same spirit as Wordsworth ,
, , who , in all the noble tenderness of his nature , believed " that their life is hid with Christ in God" and though obscured and blotted
• out by the dull mists of idiotcy , , or the dark tempests of delirium , their souls may yet be in communion with their Maker , and
/ ready hereafter to again irradiate the mind . Subsequent to the time of Shakespeare , till within a very few
• years , the condition of the insane has been sad indeed . _Protestantism burned as witches those whom Catholicism would have
canonized . Then came medical science , so called , with all her liances of restraintcoercionand isolation . Lunacy increased
app and the measures adop , ted became , more and more intolerant , and , 'less and less sagacious ; till not only were those of unsound mind
banished from home , but their very existence ignored by their . nearest relativesas if mental affliction were a heinous crime ,
, . rendering the sufferer an outcast to society and communicating a taint to all with whom he was connected .
Before we attempt to account for all this , or from statistical facts endeavor to gather statements that may enable us to judge
better of the present _jDosition of our suffering neighbors , let us briefly glance at the great cause of the increase of lunacy . It has
been stated by a celebrated French writer , M . Brierre de Boismont , . that " Insanity is more frequent in proportion as civilization is
more developed , and is more rare where the people is less enlihtened . " This a _proxDOsition so startlingthat unless
sup g _23 orted by _indisjDiitable appears facts , we might be led to , consider the assertion as altogether untenable . It seems a contradiction to
common sense—a contradiction to all that we hold most sacred , — ,
that the social advancement of a people should , even in a remote
308 Insanity, Past And Present.
308 INSANITY , PAST AND PRESENT .
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), Jan. 1, 1861, page 308, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01011861/page/20/
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