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