Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 283, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 November 1910 — Says World is Going Mad [ARTICLE]

Says World is Going Mad

Dr. Forbes Winslow, Lunacy Expert, Takes Pessimistic View of Future ' s —Pace Is Rapid. London.—According to Dr. Forbes Winslow, who acquired International celebrity by his sedulous Insistence on his theory that “Jack the Ripper" was a homicidal maniac, the world Is going mad. Doctor Winslow considers that the rate of progress to that consummation is shockingly rapid. In a book of reminiscences published recently this expert In criminal lunacy says: “By a simple arithmetical calculation it can be shown the exact year when there will be more Insane persons in the world than sane. We in England are gradually approaching,

with the decadence of our youth, near proximity to a nation of madmen. “By comparing the lunacy statistics of 1869 with those of 1909, four decades having Intervened, by reflections are sad Indeed. A terrible but real curse is in store, and an insane world looks forward to me with certainty in the not far distant future. “In 1869, out of a population of 22,223,299, there were 53,177 registered lunatics in England and Wales, there beirig one lunatic In evAry 418 of total population, whereas in 1909, out of a population of 35,756,615, the number of registered lunatics was 128,787, making on an average one lunatic tn every 278 of population. So that In 40 years an enormous increase In lunacy is seen. Surely a dreadful future for nations still unborn to have to cope with. "These are the facts, and sad to reflect upon. They must be accepted. They cannot in any way be challenged." Doctor Winslow's phraseology Is sometimes unhappy, as when he writes, for instance: “I breathed the atmosphere of lunacy for over sixty years, and the conclusions I arrive at are pessimistic in the extreme."