As stated by Morel, in the passage quoted, pregnancy is sometimes recommended as a cure for a pre-existing mental derangement. Esquirol' states that, though pregnancy, childbirth, and lactation, are means which Nature sometimes adopts for curing insanity, yet such a favorable termination is rare. Though he has often seen childbirth render a maniac more calm, and though, in the case of a lady who, at each of five pregnancies, became insane, to be cured at each delivery, he nevertheless regards such cases as quite exceptional; and that he has often seen insanity not only persist but become aggravated by these conditions.

Dagonet' confirms this opinion, and cites the case of a young girl, the subject of nymphomania, whose condition was rendered much worse by pregnancy and childbirth.

I have never known marriage entered upon for the purpose of curing insanity, but I have repeatedly had it suggested to me for my opinion, and I have always advised against such a

course.

During or soon after childbirth, in the period intervening before the re-establishment of the menstrual discharge, the mother is liable to a peculiar form of insanity, known as puerperal mania. This, as a distinct type of mental alienation, will engage our attention further on.

The period of lactation is also of considerable influence in causing insanity, especially with those who do not suckle their children. The form of insanity is generally similar to that which follows childbirth, and by many authors is regarded as essentially the same condition.

Marcé states that the sex of the child borne by the mother, or nursed by her, is sometimes a determining cause of insanity, women, he says, becoming the subjects of mental alienation after having given birth to male infants, while with every female child they have remained exempt. As he further says, these facts, at first sight, seem inexplicable, till we recall to mind the circumstances that the male child is larger, and, consequently, is born with more difficulty than the female, and that it sucks the breast with more vigor, and hence makes greater demands upon the mother for sustenance. I have not noticed any difference in this respect, nor do I

1 "Des maladies mentales," Paris, 1838, t. i, p. 193.

"Nouveau traité elementaire et pratique des maladies mentales," Paris, 1876,

p. 498.

think it has been observed to exist among the women of this country.

Notwithstanding all these factors, which are only effective with the female sex, there are others acting with so much greater force on males as to cause insanity to be much more common in them than in females. The cares incident to providing for a family, the anxieties and wear and tear of mind connected with business and other affairs of the world, and, above all, excessive indulgence in the use of alcoholic liquors and of the sexual organs, and many other influences that will be more specifically considered under another head, are so many powerful agents acting with far greater force on men than on women, and hence aiding in making them more liable to insanity.

Another series of causes tending to make mental alienation more common in men than in women are those which arise from exposure to inclement weather, the direct rays of the sun, noxious vapors and emanations, and to various accidents and injuries, producing wounds of the head.

CHAPTER XIII.

RACE.

THE several races of men are distinguished by great differences-so great, indeed, that they can scarcely be regarded as due to any other cause than a diversity of origin. Climate, hunger, destitution, disease, exposure, degradation, vicious habits and appetites, will, in the course of time, produce many alterations in the form and aspect of organic beings, but they cannot so alter original types as to cause a race, whether of plants or of animals, to lose its identity. Thus, the several varieties of the cabbage are all derived from a wild plant, scarcely edible, growing on the sea-coast rocks of Great Britain. The many kinds of apples all come from a common stock -the crab-apple. The peach, the most luscious of our fruits, has its origin in the bitter-almond of Persia. Yet, however much these plants, and many others that might be mentioned, may have varied from the parent growth, they all evince a tendency to return to the original form when sepa

rated from the influences which have given rise to the deviation.

So with the various alterations which animals have undergone through the action of a changed mode of life, or a different climate, continuing through many generations. Restore them to their former conditions of existence, and in a short time the original type is reached. Take, for example, the sheep. The fleece of this animal consists of two kinds of wool intermingled; one is formed of coarse, stiff hairs, the other of short, fine, curly wool. In the merino-sheep this latter is greatly in excess, and hence the value set on fabrics made of it; but, if the animal is removed to a colder region than is natural to it, the coarse, straight hair takes the place of the softer variety, and the value of the whole growth is lost. Replace the merino-sheep in its native climate, and the soft wool soon again becomes predominant.

The turkey, which is found wild in this country, is of a brownish-black color; by the mere act of domestication it becomes wholly changed in its markings, and is frequently met with entirely white. If, however, it is allowed to run wild again in its native forests, the original uniformity of hue is soon resumed.

Other animals, under like circumstances, become changed in the form of their ears, the shape of their skulls, or the character of their horns; but these variations, like the others mentioned, have nothing of permanence about them. They merely exist while the conditions which gave rise to them are in force.

Now, with the several races of mankind the case is altogether different. There are, it is true, certain changes wrought in the physical appearance of man through unfavorable climate and the degenerating influences mentioned. And there are other alterations produced by the action of agents capable of developing his mental and physical organization; but these are quite as transitory in their character as those which ensue in the lower forms of organic beings, to some of which I have just referred, and cannot be held to account for the marked peculiarities which distinguish what are known as the races of men any more than they will explain the differences which exist between the lion and the tiger, the horse and the ass, or the Polar bear and his grizzly representative in the Rocky Mountains.

Place the Caucasian in the tropics of South America, Asia, or Africa, and though his skin may become darker and his hair blacker and coarser, he is, nevertheless, though he remains there for thousands of years, in no danger of being taken for an individual of any other race.

The negro, for nearly four hundred years, has inhabited America. During all that period, his mode of life and the climate to which he has been exposed are altogether different from those natural to him. He has been subjected to humanizing and civilizing influences, his animal wants have been supplied, and yet, except in cases of a mixing of the blood, he presents the same aspects as his progenitors, whose representatives are figured on the monuments of ancient Egypt erected three thousand years ago. Certainly within the historic period there has been no change in the characteristics of the white, yellow, brown, and black races of mankind.

Even in peculiarities which scarcely rise to the height of being racial we observe a permanence which seems to endure under all conditions. For example, the Jews, for nearly two thousand years, have been subjected to varieties of climate, and manners and customs as different from each other as can be found anywhere on the face of the globe, and yet a member of the nation can be as well recognized under the black skin and hair of the African Jew as under the fair skin and red hair of his co-religionist of Norway and Sweden. Before the war, I never met but one Jew in the ranks of the regular army. He had a fair, freckly skin, and hair the color of a carrot. He came from Scotland, and he called himself Ferguson; but he was circumcised, and was as veritable an Israelite in figure, and in the shape of his eyes, nose, and mouth, as any who ever walked the streets of Jerusalem.

There are great differences to be observed in the cranial capacities and cerebral development of the several races of mankind. The late Dr. Morton, of Philadelphia, was among the first to study this subject. His method of determining the capacity of the skull was to fill it with small shot, and then, by measuring these in a graduated vessel, ascertain the cubical contents. He found that the mean cranial capacity in Americans of European descent was 92 cubic inches, in the American Indians 79 cubic inches, and in the negroes 83 cubic inches.

The form of the skull is also a matter of racial difference.

In the negro, for instance, it is long and narrow, constituting the form called dolichokephalic; in the Tartar it is broad and short-brachykephalic; and in the white or European mesokephalic that is, a mean between the two others.

1

As regards the weight of the brain in the several races, Thurnam has collected some interesting statistics, by which it appears that the average for male Europeans is about 49 ounces, and for negroes 44.3 ounces, or 1,390 and 1,255 grammes, respectively, while, according to Dr. Clapham,' the average brain weight of eleven Chinese males was 50:45 ounces, or about 1,430 grammes. These results are so different from what might have been expected that we may reasonably suppose a source of error to have existed. The subjects were coolies, and they died during the typhoon in HongKong in September, 1874.

As regards the liability to mental derangement, there are very few data at our command, and those we have are complicated by other circumstances than race, which tend to render them of little value. Thus, when it is asserted, and apparently with truth, that negroes are less prone to insanity than the whites, we do not know how much of this immunity is the result of the racial factor, and how much is due to the differences in the mode of life, the degree of activity of the mind, etc., which exist; and the like is true of the American Indian. Place either one of them, in his youth, in New York, let him adopt the manners and customs of the average resident of that city, overwork his mind at school, use alcohol to excess, plunge into the pursuits of money-making with his whole heart and mind, deprive him of a large part of his natural rest-sleep-and prevent him from exercising his body to the extent it requires, and the probability is that he will be as likely to become insane as any white man similarly situated. It is certainly true that barbarous nations do not exhibit so strong a tendency to mental alienation as do those that are civilized, but this is simply because they are barbarous, and not because they belong to different races. As nations advance in civilization, the tendency to all kinds of diseases of the mind is increased, because it is just the very causes which make civilization, and the vices which necessarily ac1 Op. cit., loc. cit.

"Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Irelaud," vol. vii, p. 90.