Volume 2

Health lectures for the people.

Date:
1883-1892
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Health lectures for the people. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    14/600 (page 2)
    know of no more dire and distressful diseases than those which are comprised under the generic term of insanity. Of course all disease brings more or less acute misery in its train, misery to the sufferer and misery to friends and relatives. But insanity entails even more poignant anxiety and trouble. The affected person is a changed being, shut off mentally from the home circle. In ordinary disease, as a rule, the sufferings of the patient can be relieved by the cheering influences of home, whereas in the case of insanity the patients are, for the most part, debarred from such alleviations. The nature of the disease is such that in the large majority of cases it is absolutely necessary to remove the man or woman mentally afflicted from the family, and submit him or her to the treatment of strangers. I repeat, I know of no more melancholy disease, or one that demands greater sympathy. And yet is it not curious that there is a certain savour of the comic and grotesque associated in the public mind with mental disease and defect 1 If, in proof of this asser- tion, we turn to the comic papers, we constantly find para- graphs supposed to be dated from lunatic asylums, or communi- cations from our Insaneitary Correspondent, and so on. Insanity serves as a peg on which to hang jocular remarks, with- out consideration for the feelings of many mentally afflicted per- sons who are quite able to appreciate the cruelty of the proceed- ing, or without thought for the sensibilities of their connections. No one makes a jest of cancer or consumption; and I feel certain that if the professional joker would but reflect how helpless his butt is, and how sad his condition, he would refrain from expend- ing his wit in such a direction. I freely admit it is often impos- sible to repress a smile as one listens to the incongruous state- ments of the insane ; but this is a very different thing from sit- ting down deliberately, pen in hand, to make capital out of the peculiarities of the maniac or idiot. I do not choose to run the risk of being accused of making capital out of the details of this distressing subject, even for the purposes of a Health Lecture, and therefore will keep myself to the general question. In so doing, T cannot injure individual susceptibilities.