For a long time we have been having a very hopeless feeling in regard to insanity, for not only has this been on a rather rapid percentage increase, that is, increasing faster than the population, but also mental defectives, morons, cripples, imperfect births, have all been on a percentage increase that is rather disconcerting, and we have been asking why for a long time.

Dr. John Harvey Kellogg opined not long ago that if the present rate of increase were to keep up for just fifty more years we would not have enough normal brains to take care of the abnormal.

Do not be shocked if you are told that this very same condition comes from the very same causes as all of our other degenerations, for this is a degeneration, at least one of function of the brain, and all degenerations are due to either progressive acid saturation or to the effects of drugs, particularly of mercury.

Does it not seem strange that when the country is so well equipped with everything that should make one happy there is still this acute unhappiness that expresses as insanity?

No doubt nerve stresses do play a prominent part in the production of this state, but these are simply the last straws, a condition of the system being necessarily present before this break occurs that has made it possible.

In other words, insanity does not develop out of a clear sky and all at once, but the causes that have perhaps suddenly culminated in this so-called attack have been forming for years.

The real cause, as is true of all disease, is in the state of the system itself, and has always been so, whether this state is produced by continual and progressive autointoxication or by drugs of character inimical to the brain function.

This conclusion is reached partly through theory and partly through experience, the latter partly personal and partly that of observation.

During the twenty-four years that the writer has been enjoying a really sane manner of treatment of every sort of condition from every section there have been seventeen cases of dementia precox, insanity of those below the point of senility, and these were all admitted through misrepresentation, this being that the case was one of "nervous prostration," perhaps with admission of slight mental aberration that was supposed to be due to the condition of the nerves.

Nervous prostration cases, the usual type of neurasthenic patient, are all queer, all have certain mental aberrations that are unaccountable, so it was not difficult to have such case accepted for treatment, and it was usually not discovered till after the friends had sawed off the patient on our hands that the type was a dementia precox, some of these exhibiting evidences of recent restraint from shackles.

We then were compelled to do the best we could with a very bad situation, but with the exception of five cases that were unmanageable without restraint all made splendid comebacks; two or three relapsed after returning to their homes (and their former habits, no doubt) while the others definitely overcame their mental condition and developed a high grade of health, which was sufficient guarantee that there would be no relapse without a return to acid-forming habits of eating.

This is but a small group from which to draw conclusions, too small to be sufficient argument, but this is supplemented by observation of a much larger group under treatment of similar scope in the hands of others that bears out the experience of the writer.

Now every one of these poor souls was mentally sick because he or she was first physically sick, and had been for a long time before becoming "queer."

Keep in mind the trinity and see where this works out.

Innumerable post mortems have been performed on the dead from this cause, in fact the usual routine is to perform an autopsy on every case that dies in a State institution, unless the friends refuse this, yet there is no change in brain structure to account for this, except in the paresis cases, supposed to be end results of syphilis, where there is some circulatory change that may be due to syphilis, but more than likely to the mercury that has been used in its treatment.

This is the usual end result of mercurialisation--sclerosis-- and it would be interesting to find a case that had never been treated with mercurials, yet died of paresis, and find out if the expected brain structure changes are present.

Psychiatrists say that the element of sex abnormality is the predisposing and usually the exciting factor in the usual case of insanity in more than fifty per cent of the cases studied in the State asylums, and I would like to add to this that the other fifty per cent may be traced to nutritional aberrations which would also include much of the sexual type, as physical abnormalities are behind sexual aberrations to a shocking degree.

So if some psychiatrist will devise means to restrain the sex losses, let us add to that a complete correction of the nutritional state and corner practically all of the insanity at one time.

While it may not be possible to restrain sexual excesses, as these are of such an intimately personal character, we can at least clean up the physical state, as that is within conscious control, especially so in institutions where the patient is fed willy nilly with what is provided by the management.

The condition of insanity is so completely misunderstood, so very baffling to the psychiatrist, that little effort is made to do anything for these cases except to confine them to institutions, to restrain them from doing harm to others, and the percentage of those who recover and return to active life is pitifully small.

Again, if the mental state acts on the physical, to just exactly the same extent does the physical react on the mental, and when we know well that mental stresses do inhibit physical normality, it must be that the reverse is true and the physical state does equally influence the mental.