Democratic Sentinel, Volume 5, Number 21, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 July 1881 — Insanity as a Disease. [ARTICLE]

Insanity as a Disease.

Some sagacious observations on this point may be found in the report of the Commissioner of Lunacy in England, 1880. One extract will not lie out of place : “The disease of lunacy, it should be observed, is essentially different in its character from other maladies. In a certain proportion of cases the patient neither recovers nor dies, but remains an incurable lunatic, requiring little medical skill in respect to his mental disease, and frequently living many years. A patient in this state requires a place of refuge, but, his disease being beyond the reach of medical skill, it is quite evident that he should bo removed from asylums instituted for the cure of insanity, in order to make room for others whose cases have not yet Ixjcxime hopeless. If some plan of this sort be not adopted, the asylums admitting paupers will necessarily continue full of inerrable patients, and those whose cases still admit of cure will be unable to obtain admission until they become incurable, and the skill and labor of the physician will thus be wasted upon improper objects. The great expense of a lunatic hospital is unnecessary for incurable patients ; the medical staff, the number of attendants, the minute classification, and the other requisites of a hospital for the cure of disease are not required to the same extent An establishment, therefore, upon a much less expensive scald would be sufficient.”

A precocious boy of 6 years, listening wearily to a long-winded tale related by a prosy relative, took advantage of a short pause to say, slyly, “ I wish that story had been brought out to Buwbws,"