Third annual report of the managers of the State Lunatic Asylum : made to the Legislature January 23, 1846 / New York State Lunatic Asylum at Utica.

  • New York (State). State Lunatic Asylum.
Date:
1846
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Third annual report of the managers of the State Lunatic Asylum : made to the Legislature January 23, 1846 / New York State Lunatic Asylum at Utica. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    anxious and protracted religious excitements, have each furnished the Asylums with inmates. IMMEDIATE OR EXCITING CAUSES. Some of the causes already alluded to occasionally produce imme¬ diate insanity, though we consider their most dangerous tendency, is, to predispose a larger number, and to render them liable to this disease from a very slight exciting cause. The exciting causes are mostly enumerated in our Table of Sup¬ posed Causes. They are such as the various forms of domestic trouble, reverses of fortune, religious anxiety, fright, &c. We regard them as far less important than those which predispose to this disease. We are too apt to regard the excitement of mind that immediately precedes the attack, as the cause, while in fact the mind had previously been driven to the verge of madness by perhaps an entirely different cause. Many a case of insanity attributed to ill-health, to religious anxiety, domestic trouble, or to some sudden reverse of fortune, had its origin, we apprehend, in anterior causes; often in.the want of proper moral discipline in early life, in the too great indulgence of parents, and in gloomy and erroneous religious views early inculcated. We regard the religious discipline of the mind, or religious edu¬ cation, which teaches our duty to God and our obligations to our fel¬ low men, obedience to the precepts of the gospel, and that we do not live wholly for ourselves, as the most effectual safeguard against insanity. It is this, and this alone, that can give to men that Chris¬ tian courage that will enable them to bear the contrarieties and ills of life without danger to their mental peace. But while many, very many, become insane for the want of reli¬ gious instruction, we have no doubt others are made so, by that which is erroneous, and by the untimely and too urgent inculcation of peculiar religious views. Thus, we regard the teaching of the extreme danger of committing the u unpardonable sinand of being tinder the influence and in the u possession of the devil.” The truth of these doctrines we do not purpose to question, but to state, what much observation has taught us, that their frequent and