Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 285, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 December 1910 — SAYS WORLD IS GOING MAD [ARTICLE]

SAYS WORLD IS GOING MAD

8° Declares Dr. Forbes Winslow, Expert on Criminal Lunacy, In Recent Publication. London.—According to Dr. Forbes Winslow, who acquired International celebrity by bls sedulous insistence on his theory that “Jack the Ripper” was a homicidal maniac, the world is going mad. J Dr. Winslow considers that the rate of progress to that consummation is shockingly rapid. In a book of reminiscences 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, my reflections are sad indeed. A terrible but real curse is in store, and an insane world seems to me a 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 being one lunatic in every 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 in every 278 of population. So that in forty 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.” Dr. Winslow s phraseology is sometimes unhappy, as when he writes, for instance: * . ■> “I have breathed the atniosphere of lunacy for over sixty years, and the conclusions I arrive at are pessimistic in the extreme.” „