The Nation

September 7, 1905

A Disease of Civilization

THE OLD QUESTION whether insanity increases as civilization advances is
still open....

We are told that the industrial and commercial life of the present is so
intense and rapid that even strong men bend and break
under the pressure. There is work without recreation, excitement without
rest, gayety without pleasure--in short, nervous
expenditure without corresponding satisfaction....

...Fatigue, disease, and madness invite intemperance. It is not the
intemperance of a former generation--the drunkenness of
the three-bottle squire or of the luxurious rich. It is the intemperance of
the poor, of the hard-worked men and women who
live from hand to mouth, and who seek to bring a momentary idealism into
their lives by an artificial stimulus. There are
preparations of drugs innumerable, advertised everywhere, to add fuel to the
fire beneath the cracked boiler.... Cities like
flaming lamps attract the multitudes like moths. Bad sanitary conditions and
crowded tenements beget weak bodies and weak
minds, breed immorality and consequent disease. Thus the idea has become
more or less prevalent that society is going downhill....

But this pessimistic conclusion is greatly weakened by other considerations
of equal importance.... Almost all those who now
suffer from mental diseases are sent to asylums.... Better accommodations
for the patients, a greater number of institutions,
the frequency of cures, the tendency to regard insanity as a disease like
any other disease, and not as a moral obliquity--all
these causes make people more ready to go or to send their afflicted
relatives to public or private asylums for better care.

December 6, 1900