ABSTRACT
The prevention of insanity is one of the most serious problems confronting mankind. Insanity occurs among the biologically defective and aberrant. Save in that relatively small proportion in which it is acquired as result of intoxications and disease affecting the individual, it is expressive of a hereditary neuropathy. This neuropathy is the result of the various morbid influences to which the stock has been exposed, perhaps for generations. Marriage in relation to insanity presents also another aspect; in persons of feeble and neurotic constitution, marriage may of itself prove a cause of insanity. The new functions assumed, the strain of pregnancy, child-birth, or lactation, may in women of feeble constitution, as is well known, result in alienation. The treatment of insanity, after it has become established, resolves itself, into first, and especially, the application of physiologic methods; and, secondarily, the use of medicines.
