I read, at the time of its publication in 1886, and again in 1890, after a visit to Dr. Tuke in London, his first paper on the “Alleged increase of insanity,” and I await with much expectation the full text of his recent paper on the same topic. The conclusion that I draw from the statistics there presented (in 1886) is not exactly the same that my friend Dr. Tuke draws. I distrust very much the records of first attacks; so far as my observation goes—extended now over a period of 30 years, and many thousand cases of insanity whose certificates I have separately examined—there is nothing in the proverbially doubtful statistics of the insane more dubious than those affecting to give the date of a “first attack.” Even for purposes of comparison, year by year, they have scarcely more value than a mixture of pounds sterling, years of our Lord, bushels of wheat, and a few other numbers jumbled together in an account, so totally varying are the judgments and the exactness of the certifiers who set down the alleged “first attack.” Until these variances can in some way be reduced by the better observation of the asylum physician, I, for one, am inclined to leave the tabulation of “first attacks” where good sense has long left the asylum tables of “causes of insanity.” One may possibly be as good as the other, but neither can throw any clear light on the real facts of insanity.
Little has been written, and comparatively little is known with precision, concerning the insane of Greece—whether we speak of the little kingdom alone, with its present population of nearly 2,500,000, or of the Greeks in general, who live in Macedonia, in Asia Minor, in Egypt, or elsewhere outside of the present limits of Greece. This whole community, diverse in origin and residence, but united by a common language and a common religion, considers itself as one, and sends to the two asylums in Greece—the old Phrenokomeion of Corfu (founded in 1838), and the comparatively new Dromokäiteion in Athens—insane persons from all the countries in which Greeks reside. Thus, during the year 1892 the Athenian Asylum (which takes its special name from a Greek family named Dromokäites, whose wealth has endowed it) received 70 admissions; and of these 13, or nearly one-fifth, came from places outside of Greece. A smaller proportion among the 175 (more or less) who now reside in the Corfu Asylum are from outside of Greece, and it is probable that this proportion is constantly diminishing there. But Athens, from its central position, its rank as a capital, and the affection with which most Greeks regard it, is likely to draw to itself more and more the persons attacked with insanity outside of Greece. This fact will increase a little the visible insanity of the kingdom; but so many are the causes tending to conceal the extent of this malady there that the circumstance of these outside accessions need hardly be taken into account. There is no census of the Greek insane, even professing to be exact, and I have been forced to rely, in my tours and inquiry during two visits to Greece (in 1890 and 1893), on the estimates of careful persons and my own observation.
The first volume of this work ends with my father's deliverance from the Prussian prison, in April, 1832. In the autumn of the same year he returned to America, and instantly set about his new task. Many years later, writing to Horace Mann of this time, he says : " In 1832 I put the Institution for the Blind into operation, and have administered it ever since. As soon as I had taught two or three children,' which I did in my father's house,for the Institution was then poor and had no ' There were actually six. ^t. 31 -571-The Cadmus of the Blind ' /. e. the first to be incorporated. The New York school, though incorporated two years later than the Boston one (1831), actually opened a few months before it, in March, 1832. The following year saw the opening of the Philadelphia school. These three are known as the pioneer schools. See also note, p. 50. ' My father in his Reports often speaks of himself in the third person. ^t. 3I-S7] The Cadmus of the Blind 19 condition that it should educate and support twenty poor blind from the State gratuitously." This exhibition was followed up by others made before the public in Salem, and in Boston, which excited great interest. . . . The ladies of Salem first suggested the idea of a fair ; and assisted by those of Marblehead and Newburyport, they got up a splendid fete, which resulted in a net profit of $2,980."Resolving not to be outdone, the ladies of Boston entered the field with great ardour, and opened a bazaar on the first of May in Faneuil Hall. . . . The net profits of this fair amoimted to $11,400."This was the first fancy fair ever held in Boston, and it was long remembered as a most brilliant and delightful occasion. Boston seems to have been fuller even than usual of beautiful women, lovely girls and splendid matrons ; and one and all entered heartily into the spirit of the fair, giving
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