swoop down
upon you before morning. Think of facing death by famine every winter,
by drought or cyclone every summer, and by open war or secret
scalp-raid every month in the year; and then say that the racking
nerve-strain of the commuter's time-table, the deadly clash of the
wheat-pit, or the rasping grind of office-hours, would be ruinous to the
uncivilized nervous system. Certainly, in those belated savages, the
dwellers in our slums, hysteria, diseases of the imagination, enjoyment
of ill health, and the whole brood of functional nervous disturbances
are just as common as they are on Fifth Avenue.

It is not even certain that insanity is increasing. Insanity is quite
common among savages; just how common is difficult to say, on account of
their peculiar methods of treating it. The stupid and the dangerous
forms are very apt to be simply knocked on the head, while the more
harmless and fantastic varieties are turned into priests and prophets
and become the founders of the earlier religions. A somewhat similar
state of affairs of course prevailed among civilized races up to within
the last three-quarters of a century. The idiot and the harmless lunatic
were permitted to run at large, and the latter, as court and village
fools, furnished no small part of popular entertainment, since organized
into vaudeville. Only the dangerous or violent maniacs were actually
shut up; consequently, the number of insane in a community a century ago
refers solely to this class. Hence, in every country where statistics
have been kept, as larger and larger percentages of these unfortunates
have been gathered into hospitals, where they can be kindly cared for
and intelligently treated, the number of the registered insane has
steadily increased up to a certain point. This was reached some fifteen
years ago in Great Britain, in Germany, in Sweden, and in other
countries which have taken the lead in asylum reform, and has remained
practically stationary since, at the comparatively low rate of from two
to three per thousand living. This limit shows signs of having been
reached in the United States already; and this gradual increase of
recognition and registration is the only basis for the alleged increase
of insanity under modern conditions.

It is also a significant fact that the lower and less favorably situated
stratum of our population furnishes not only the largest number of
inmates, but the largest percentage of insanity in proportion t