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148 INSANITY AMONG WOMEN.
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.
In Directing His Attention To The Import...
both , sexes into various asylums . His first table is derived froni 159 asylums in England and Wales . Of the total
admissions—70 , 582—35 , 672 were men , and 34 , 910 women , the excess of the former being 762 . Another table shows that of the admissions
into American , Scotch , Irish , Belgian , French , and German asylums for the insane—54 , 446 in number—29 , 114 were men , and 25 , 332
were women , the excess of males being 3 , 782 , or fourteen per cent . About the same result is exhibited in a table prepared by Dr .
Thurnamin which the admissions into various American , Conti-, nental , and British asylums ( excluding Bethlem and St . Luke ' s *)
amount to 48 , 103 , of which , 25 , 601 were males , and 22 , 502 were femalesthe excess of males being 13 * 7 per cent . In nine English
-, county asylums the excess "was twelve per cent . It would have been satisfactory could we have stated how many
persons have become lunatic in England and Wales during a certain number of yearsdistinguishing the sexes , and comparing
them with the males and , females in the general population between the ages of twenty and fifty . We cannot , however , do this , since
there is no _n return made in the Poor Law Commissioners' Reports of the admissions of lunatics into workhousesand of the number of
, fresh cases annually added to the class " with their friends or elsewhere . "
A consideration of the foregoing facts , however , —the excess of females in the population of England and Wales—their still greater
excess between the ages of twenty and thirty , when first attacks of insanity occur , in all probability , most frequently—the fallacy of
drawing conclusions from the existing , instead of the occurring cases of insanity—the accumulation of females in asylums in
consequence of their low mortality—and lastly , the fact that in England and Wales the admissions of males into asylums exceed those of
females—will suffice to show that the apparent greater liability of females to insanity , is only apparent , and is , in short , the opposite
of the truth . Whilehoweverin the face of the foregoing statistical facts , I
cannot join , in the , conclusion that in England more women become insane than menI none the less unite in the opinion that there
is something wrong , in the circumstances by which , women are surrounded which allows of the amount of insanity which no doubt
does exist , and , so to speak , unnecessarily exists . It is not easy to Ox . the relative value or importance of the
favorable and unfavorable agencies which , as regards the induction of insanitaffect the female world . Regarded from a physical or
constitutional y , point of view , there can be no doubt that for obvious reasons the nervous system of women is peculiarly exposed , at
times , to the unfavorable action of bodily disorders . In illustration * "In these asylums the proportion of the sexes Into was the reversed . With for these some
' ex Continental ceptions we asy cannot lums the now sam enter e . iact obtains . reasons
148 Insanity Among Women.
148 INSANITY AMONG WOMEN .
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), May 1, 1861, page 148, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01051861/page/4/
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