Insanity

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Aug 9, 1910

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 37, No. 31.

Insanity.—More than one seventh of the entire revenue of New York is spent in maintaining hospitals for insane people. Over fifty-four million dollars was used for that purpose in the last ten years. The New York American tells us that successive federal censuses show that in the country at large there is a steady and ominous increase of insanity; an increase out of all proportion to the growth of population. In the asylums of the United States in 1880 there were 876 insane persons to every million of the population. In 1890 there were 1,182; and in 1900, 1,862. At the same rate of increase the census now being taken will show about 2,800 insane to every million of the population. And at the same rate, if time should go on as now, more than half of the inhabitants of the United States would be in the mad-house at the end of the present century. Yet the whole strenuous life that people are leading is tending to insanity; and above all other causes is that which utterly disregards God, man's obligation to Him, and faith in Him as the source of life and strength. Forgetting God, people go into all sorts of excesses.