Abstract
DURING the last twenty or thirty years there has been a very large increase in the number of insane under detention in asylums. This increase, Mr. Thomas Drapes argues with much force in the Fortnightly, is mainly due to accumulation of chronic cases, and does not in itself necessarily indicate any increase in insanity in the sense of increased liability to mental derangement on the part of the community. In fact, the number of insane under care could double itself in the course of a comparatively short period of years without the addition of a single case to the number of those annually attacked. For these reasons, and because lunacy statistics only show a rise of 0˙3 per 10,000 (from 4˙5 to 4˙8) of first admissions in twenty years, Mr. Drapes holds that no alarming increase has occurred in liability to insanity in England.
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Science in the Magazines. Nature 54, 589–590 (1896). https://doi.org/10.1038/054589a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/054589a0