INFLUENZA A CAUSE OF INSANITY.

Evening Star, Issue 12926, 14 April 1908, Page 1

INFLUENZA A CAUSE OF INSANITY.

Dr Clouston. who has just bren retired from the management of the principal mental hospital at J:>linLursh, in his report for 1907 has something of great interest to say touching the causes of insanity. Following the" oldest and simplest classification of moiital diseases, in which the elevated and excited were put in one category, and the depressed or melancholic in another, he says thai, a very suggestive fact appeared when one compared the numbers of those two classes sent U) the institution before 1890, the year of the great epidemic of influenza," and those sent since that time. From the vear 1874, liis first full year of office, up to 1890, the number of melancholies had never touched that of the maniacal. There were only 1,846 of the depressed in the sixteen years, to 2,832 of the exalted, or 40 per cent, of the total, while in 'the eighteen years since 1890 (inclusive) there had been 2.662 melancholies to 3,125 cases of maiiia, or 46 per cent. In 1900 for the first time the numbers of the depressed exceeded those of the excited, while in 1905 this was also the ra.se. In 1896-97 and 1907 the numbers of both classes were equal. The depressing effect on the whole nervous energy of that scourge of humanity, influenza, was now fully recognised, and its direct effects, bad as they were, were scarcely equal to its indirect and distant consequences. Melancholia was not the only nervous disease predisposed to by influenza-. Neurasthenic conditions, premature senility, various forms of paralysis, all kinds of neuralgic affections, and a general incapacity for work, both bodily and mental, had all been noticed as following influenza. It seems as if no disease of whose effects there was any correct record had had such farreaching_ evil effects. Though alcoholic excess did not bulk so largely as usual as a cause of insanity, it was "a somewhat startling fact- that women now appeared almost as frequently as men in the lists. Looking back over the past ten years, the figures tended decidedly to strengthen the idea that women of the working cla-sses had taken more to excess in drink than ever before. If this represented a general social fact, it was a bad import for th<* future of the population. The number and the proportion of the cases of general paralysis remained large, forty cases having been sent to the institution during the year, and the number of women ("fourteen) was very much larger than used to be the case. The percentage of recoveries was 28.6, which was a low one as corrrpa-rcd with Uieir average of 38.5, bat he believed this comparatively low percentage resulted from the fact that cases of a different class were now sent to mental hospitals from those who were sent thirty years ago among the poor. There were far more patients of tho old, weakened, and paralysed class sent than formerly. Daring the thirty-five years since he assumed office knowledge of the •nature and paftiology of many of the forms of mental disease had greathv increased, and the terror and reproach, of the disease were visibly lessening.