55 2 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
While many were burned as witches, those who were recognized as insane were compelled to endure all the horrors of the harshest imprisonment. Blows, bleeding, and chains were their usual treatment, and horrible accounts are given of madmen who had spent decades bound in dark cells .... not until the eighteenth century was the condition of this unhappy class seriously improved. 8
We may judge of the former treatment of the insane from Shake- speare's words: "Love is merely a madness I tell you, deserves as well a dark house and a whip as madmen do." 4 Until very recently, then, in the vast majority of cases, the unfortunate lunatic was placed under conditions which insured death or per- manent insanity. From the moment his mental unsoundness declared itself he ceased to have offspring. The natural selection of the sane, therefore, was very stringent. For some generations past, however, lunatics have been treated with great humanity and skill. Beyond all classes of the community, they are now watched over by the state. Men of sound mind, but suffering from bodily illness, may perish in the slums for want of proper nourishment and care; but the insane are removed to special sanatoria, where, without expense to themselves, they receive food and lodging, and are placed under the care of trained nurses and medical specialists, over whom in turn the Commissioners in Lunacy exercise a jealous supervision. As a consequence, the lunatic frequently recovers, and is restored to his family and to the right to have as many children as other people. Here is a case in point. A lady writes :
For years I have been struggling to prevent idiots and lunatics being sent from our county asylum to marry and breed idiots just as if the thing were desirable. I gave it up in hopeless despair about four years ago, owing to the following case: A woman who is more than half idiotic came to live with two sisters one a total, the other a partial, idiot. She married a very dull, partially idiotic man, and had almost immediately to be taken to the asylum. There she gave birth to a complete idiot, and was sent home a few weeks afterward, with the result that the same thing has been repeated nine times. 3
The severity of natural selection with regard to the insane has been greatly reduced; and, as in all similar cases, characters
- Lecky, History of European Morals, Vol. II, pp. 86, 87.
4 As You Like It. Act III, scene 2.
5 Quoted by Dr. Rentoul.
