p. 16 | Growing Insanity

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Oct 19, 1904

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 30, No. 41.

Growing Insanity

Three noted Chicago alienists, those who have to do with mental diseases, declare that we are fast becoming a nation of lunatics, and that Chicago is the worst afflicted of any city in the world. These men are V. H. Podstata, Superintendent of the Dunning Insane Asylum; Dr. James P. Lynch, and Dr. Oscar A. King. They are corroborated by Judge Orrin Carter, who presides over the court in which the insane are given trial. Dr. Podstata says that one person in every one hundred and fifty in Chicago is insane, and one in every five predisposed to insanity. One of the most popular songs of the year in Chicago is called, “O, Gee! Ain’t It Great to Be Crazy?” Dr. James P. Lynch sees the earth one big lunatic asylum in 700 years unless conditions change. “Insanity has increased 300 per cent. in fifty years, and it has increased half of that in ten years,” said he. “Drink, drugs, speculation, worry, overwork, are some of the causes of insanity. The conditions of women must change in order to have a healthy race. Either America will become a childless nation or the list of insane will swell because of the nervous, weakling offspring of the nerve-wrecked mothers.” And there is more to be said.