evention, and cure_.

It is a long time since Grotius wrote, "The study of the human mind is
the noblest branch of medicine;" and we realize to-day that it is
the noblest study of man, regardless of vocation. Aye! it is the
imperative study of our generation and of those who are to follow us,
if we would continue, as we wish to be, the conservators of the good
and great, and promoters of advancing capability for great and good
deeds in our humanity.

One known and acknowledged insane person to every five hundred sane
persons, and among those are unreckoned numbers of unstably endowed
and too mildly mannered lunatics to require public restraint, but none
the less dangerous to the perpetuation of the mental stability of the
race, is an appalling picture of fact for philanthropic conservators
of the race to contemplate.

The insane temperament and its pathological twin brother, the
neuropathic diathesis, roams at large unrestrained from without or
that self-restraint which, bred of adequate self-knowledge, might come
from within, and contaminates with neurotic and mental instability the
innocent unborn, furnishing histogenic factors which the future will
formulate in minds dethroned to become helpless wards of the state or
family.

The insane temperament is more enduringly fatal to the welfare of
humanity than the deadly _comma bacillus_ which is supposed to convey
the scourge of Asia to our shores. The latter comes at stated periods,
and disappears after a season or two of devastation, in which the
least fit to survive of our population, by reason of feeble organic
resisting power, are destroyed; while resisting tolerance is
established in the remainder. But _this_ scourge is with us always,
transmitting weakness unto coming generations.

It is the insanity in chronic form which escapes asylum care and
custody except in its exacerbations; it is the insanity of organism
which gives so much of the erratic and unstable to society, in its
manifestations of mind and morals; it is the form of unstable mental
organism which, like an unstrung instrument jangling out of tune and
harsh, when touched in a manner to elicit in men of stable organisms
only concord of sweet, harmonious sounds; it is the form of mental
organism out of which, by slight exciting causes largely imaginary,
the Guiteaus and Joan d'Arcs of history are made, the Hawisons and
Passanantis and Freemans, and names innumerable, whose deeds of
blood have stain