SPIRITISTS GONE MAD.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume VII, Issue 322, 20 June 1879, Page 15

SPIRITISTS GONE MAD.

It has been stated by one of our contemporaries, in reply to a question as to the number of persons of unsound mind in America driven so by Spiritualism, that only four can be traced. This statement is quite contrary to the information we have received from the United States on the subject. We read in an article contained in the Journal of Psychological Medicine for 1856, entitled, " On Moral and Criminal Epidemics," that the spirit faith in America is computed to embrace two million of believers, and hundreds of thousands in other lands, with twenty thousand mediums. It appears that these .include men in all ranks of society, from the highest to the lowest. Many of the facts related imperatively demand that we should consider this as a delusion, not altogether an imposture, especially the consideration of the number who have gone insane on the subject. It is said that amongst the lunatics confined in public asylums in the United States, there are seven thousand five hundred and twenty who have become such entirely owing to this " spirit faith." We have also received correspondence from America on the subject, in which we have been credibly informed of the large number of insane Spiritualists at the present time confined as non compos mentis in the institutions of the United States. — Medical Press and Circular,