RS' REMEDIES]

Causes of Insanity.--There are many and various causes. One author states:
"Mental abnormality is always due to either imperfect or eccentric
physical development, or to the effects of inborn or acquired physical
disease, or to injurious impressions, either ante-natal or post natal,
upon the delicate and intricate physical structure known as the human
brain." Some physical imperfections, more than others, give rise to mental
derangements, and some persons, more than others, when affected by any
bodily ailment, tend to aberrated conditions of the mind. Some impressions
more than others, are peculiarly unfortunate by reason of their crowding
effects upon the brain tablets of a sensitive mind. To these natural
defects and unnatural tendencies, we apply, in the general way, the term
"Insane Diathesis." This diathesis may be inherited or acquired. Those who
are born to become insane do not necessarily spring from insane parents or
from an ancestry having any apparent taint of lunacy in the blood. But
they do receive from their progenitors oftentimes certain impressions upon
their mental and moral, as well as upon their physical being, which
impressions, like iron molds, fix and shape their subsequent destinies."

The insane diathesis in the child may come from hysteria in the mother. A
drunken father may impel epilepsy, madness or idiocy in the child.
Ungoverned passions, from love to hate, from hope to fear, when indulged
in overmuch by the parents, may unloose the furies of unrestrained madness
in the minds of the children. "The insane may often trace their sad
humiliation and utter unfitness for life's duties back through a tedious
line of unrestrained passion, of prejudice, bigotry, and superstition
unbridled, of lust unchecked, of intemperance uncontrolled, of avarice
unmastered, and of nerve resources wasted, exhausted, and made bankrupt
before its time. Timely warnings by the physician and appeals to his
clients of today, may save them for his own treatment, instead of
consigning them to an asylum where his fees cease from doubling, and the
crazed ones are at rest." The causes of the insane diathesis
(constitution) are frequently traceable to the methods of life of those
who produce children under such circumstances and conditions that the
offspring bear the indelible birthmark of mental weakness. Early
dissipations of the father produce an exhausted and enfeebled body; and a
demoralized mind and an unh