Excerpt from Insanity in Ancient and Modern Life: With Chapters on Its Prevention A remarkable feature of the present day is the interest felt by the public at large in ques tions relative to insanity. So far from its being confined to the Medical Profession, legislators, lawyers, clergymen, sociologists, metaphysicians, have their attention forcibly drawn to the sub jcet, and are keenly interested in it. The same may be said of many of those whose friends suffer from mental derangement. To those also who may reasonably suspect that they have the seeds of madness sown in their own constitution, or are conscious of a tendency to irregular mental action, the matter' treated of in the following pages possesses, if a painful, surely a practical importance. I hope that the action of individuals on themselves, with a view of preventing attacks of mental disorder, will be rendered more definite, and therefore more successful, by following the indications pointed out in the chapters on the Prevention of Insanity. To this subject I briefly adverted in a recent number of Macmillan (of which Chapters V. And VI. Are an expansion), but in the succeeding por tion of the work I have entered at some length into the individual management called for, when the first symptoms display themselves, desiring to offer in these chapters, hints calculated, if adopted, to ward off attacks of threatened insanity. Of the various social evils which present them selves in our age, those connected with the genesis of insanity are, it must be admitted, deserving of the consideration of all who care for their race, and wish to lessen the sum of human misery. I trust that the facts contained in this volume will tend to stimulate all social reformers in their great, and often discouraging, labours, whether carried on among the working or the higher classes, so it be not done in a narrow fanatical spirit, in other words, not judgingly, but with judgment. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.