JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post
Among the many unexpected sentences that Prof. J.A. Lindsay1 (1856-1931) writes in his article “The Eugenic and Social Influence of the War” (in The Eugenics Review, volume X, No. 3, October 1918) are the following:
“A very unexpected feature of war-time has been the decline of insanity.”
And
“... that war, fruitful though it is in shock cases and neurasthenia, does not increase, but may even tend to diminish, insanity.”
I've included the two long paragraphs in which they occur, below, and also provide a link for the full article.
Of course this makes no sense as it stands, but there it is.
Dr. Lindsay's article is followed straight away by Charles Darwin's son, Major Leonard Darwin, who wonders about the eugenic survivability of the war in his "The Need for Widespread Eugenic Reform During Reconstruction".
Eugenics as a way of life was in its heyday at this point, though its demise was approaching, and its ideas (for far as establishing it as a field of intellectual study) discredited in the next decade or so, even though the journal The Eugenics Review would survive into 1962.
Here are the quotes (bold mine):
"A very unexpected feature of war-time has been the decline of insanity. That this decline is real and not merely statistical seems to be the opinion of those best qualified to judge. Robertson of Edinburgh is of opinion that the war has acted as a mental tonic. He could trace no increase in insanity due to the war, but regarded dabbling in Spiritualism as dangerous to certain mental types. Easterbrook of Crichton Royal found only I9 cases of insanity due to "grief," and was of opinion that war had "only exposed and accentuated inherent weakness." Carre of Glasgow reported only nine cases of insanity due to the war. Robertson thought that the fall in the female statistics was due to women not being so "shut in" as before. Graham of Belfast reported a decrease in the number of insane and expressed the view that "it is not the great tragedies of life that sap the force of the brain and wreck the psychic organism. On the contrary, it is the small worries, the deadly monotony of a narrow and circumscribed existence." In 1900 the report of the Irish Inspectors of Lunatics showed that for the first time since 1865, there was no increase in the numbers of the insane in Ireland; there was, in fact, a decrease of 77. The war was. assigned as a cause in 1.32 per cent. of cases. Of 150 cases of insanity in the Navy, reported in 1916, only 15 had occurred since the outbreak of war.
The above facts admit of only one interpretation-viz., that war, fruitful though it is in shock cases and neurasthenia, does not increase, but may even tend to diminish, insanity. The factors of this result are probably complex. Better employment, higher wages, increased sobriety, a larger life for women, the general quickening of the national pulse in response to the stimulus of war may well be presumed to have played a part. The suggestion that one of the causes of insanity is monotony and full routine will probably be generally accepted by alienists. Morbid excitement, on the one hand, and the absence of wholesome stimulation on the other hand, are inimical to the preservation of the due balance of the psychic life. In this connection it is interesting to note that the Officer of Health for London, in his report for the year I917, finds that, contrary to expectation, air-raids have not led to any increase of nervous diseases amongst children. A limited number of children have suffered, but there has been no general increase of nervous diseases amongst the young. The British stock is evidently not easily thrown off its normal balance. A remarkable and unexpected result of the war has been a decided decline in the rate of suicide. In the ten years Igoi-io, the average number of male suicides was 157 per million living. In 1914 the figure was I 5 per million, while in 1915 the figure fell to 104 (civilians only), and in 1916 it stood at iII. Amongst females, as might be expected, the fluctuations were much less marked. The female rate in the decennium I900 was 47 per million living, in 1914 and 1915 it was 45, and in 1916 it was 38. These figures are a further indication that the effect of the war upon the mental stability of the nation has been tonic, rather than depressant."
Notes:
1. For some biographical background on Dr. Lindsay, see: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3632826/
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