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The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Third-day, August 27, 1867

Increase of Insanity.—The English papers are commenting earnestly on the alarming increase of insanity within a few years. The number of insane in England has increased twenty-one per cent. in five years, and in France the case is still worse, the number of the insane having increased forty per cent. in the same period, while the population only increased two per cent. The statistics show that insanity is also on the increase in the United States, and doubtless from the same cause as in the old world, the intense strain upon the mental organization required by our modern ways of doing business, and answering the demands of society. The superintendent of one of our lunatic asylums testified before the Legislature last winter, that the advance of insanity was largely due to the increasing use of intoxicating liquors. But is not the use of stimulants merely one of the preliminary steps to insanity, instead of the cause of it, which lies far back, in the constant tension on the brain of man demanded by our high-pressure civilization? If our reformers would look a little deeper, their conclusions would be more valuable, and their efforts more successful.