POVERTY.
Physical labor is one of the greatest promoters of both physical and
mental health, and its necessity should therefore be regarded as a
blessing rather than a curse for the vast majority of mankind. On the
other hand, idleness of mind and body, or conditions of life which give
neither opportunity nor necessity for exertion, tend toward ill-health and
unhappiness, and consequently are to be avoided.
The condition of poverty creates the necessity for labor, and, if its
stress is not too great, is not to be regarded as an unmixed evil. It
stimulates to exertion, and exertion tends to develop and strengthen all
portions of the system. The natural tendency of the mind is to run riot,
to avoid hardship, and to follow the enjoyment of the present moment
irrespective of the future, and it is only that discipline which comes
from the necessities of life in the midst of civilization, which can lead
it up to a higher standard of endurance and health.
If, therefore, the effects of poverty were to end here, they might
properly be regarded as blessings. But this is not the case; for the vast
majority of the poor they go much beyond the requirements of health-giving
labor and discipline, and manifest themselves in quite an opposite result.
The lack of brain-discipline, ignorance, too many hours of toil, too few
of relaxation, illy-prepared or unsuitable food, foul air in sleeping
apartments, unsanitary surroundings, and other conditions always attendant
upon the poor, especially in large towns and cities, all tend toward
deterioration of brain-tissue.
There have also resulted, for that class of the poor which has, in more
recent periods, and in some cases by fortuitous circumstances, come
suddenly into the possession of considerable sums of money, even greater
evils than those experienced from poverty. There are many persons who get
along well enough while obliged to live in the simplicity and continence
of a laborious life which provides for them food and raiment, who, when
possessed of the requisite means, will suddenly rush into wild excesses,
and in a few years their nervous systems become poisoned and wrecked. This
is especially the case in many of the new cities which have been springing
into existence within the last fifty years, stimulated thereto by
manufacturing industries. These cities provide the temptations toward, and
the means of gratifying, physical excesses, and the influence of example
serves to drag down thousands who might otherwise escape.
Moreover, the accumulation of wealth in these large places exerts an
influence not only upon those residing there, but also upon the ignorant
poor living in the vicinage, and serves to allure them to dangerous
courses of conduct who have never learned that the violation of laws which
should preside over and regulate their appetites and passions leads to
death, or, what is frequently a thousand times worse than death, viz., a
poisoned and wrecked life.
If the effects ceased with those primarily concerned, the mischief would
be less: but, unfortunately for society, they pass on to the next, or
succeeding generations, unless, as is frequently the case, through the
operation of a merciful law there does not come another generation. We are
told that the intemperate and the vicious will be shut out of the kingdom
of heaven. We have only to observe that they are shut out of the kingdom
of health while upon earth, and that the retribution of their works
follows them with a surety, and often a severity, which can be fully
realized only by physicians.
As illustrative of this point, I may refer to a class of laborers in some
of the northern portions of England. When living on the simple necessities
of life and obliged to practise the habits of frugality and industry, that
form of disease which is termed "general paralysis of the insane" was
almost unknown among them; but in consequence of physical excesses made
possible and easy, by obtaining through labor combinations the means
necessary, this most formidable and incurable disease has appeared among
them to an extent hitherto unknown among any class of society.
Similar influences are silently working and similar results are following
in a less marked degree in all our great cities and their vicinage, so
that there are to-day in all the large hospitals for the insane which are
located near these places, as indicated by statistics, more than three
times as many cases of this disease as existed thirty years ago.
There is another class of the poor, or rather of those who are living in
the conditions of poverty, and yet have, by virtue of hard labor and
economy, succeeded in accumulating some property, which contributes a
large number yearly to the admissions to hospitals for the insane. These
persons go on year after year in one unvarying routine of labor and care,
allowing themselves little or no change or hours of recreation. Perhaps I
cannot delineate more clearly the courses of daily conduct followed by
them which not unfrequently eventuate in insanity, or better illustrate
the results of such a course of life, than by reciting a case from my
yearly report for 1881.
Mrs. M., aged forty-four years, the mother of eight children, was admitted
to the Retreat in the month of January, 18--, affected with acute mania.
The husband, when asked if he could suggest any cause, or causes, of her
illness, exclaimed with much animation that he could not conceive why his
wife had become ill. "Her is a most domestic woman, is always doing
something for her children; _her_ is _always_ at work for us all; _never_
goes out of the house, even to church on Sundays; her never goes gadding
about at neighbors' houses, or talking from one to another; her always had
the boots blacked in the morning; her has been one of the best of wives
and mothers, and was _always_ at home."
This appreciative husband could hardly have furnished a more graphic
delineation of the causes of his poor wife's illness if he had understood
them ever so thoroughly, and I allude to the case as a type of many, and
to the husband's statement as evincing how thoroughly ignorant many
people, who may be shrewd and quite thrifty in worldly matters, may be as
to the primary conditions of mental health.
This woman's utter disregard of the simplest laws of health, had rendered
her in her husband's eyes chief among women, had raised her so high on the
pedestal of housewifery, that he could not conceive how it was possible
for such a model of excellence ever to become insane. If, however, she
had committed a few of the sins which were so heinous in her husband's
sight; if she had gossipped more; if she had broken away from the spell of
husband and children, forced herself from that ceaseless round of
household care and duty; if she had taken herself out of the house, into
the pure air and sunshine of heaven, even at the expense of much tattle
and large gossip, and, if need be, at the expense of less cleanly floors
and _boots_, and an occasional tear in her husband's shirt, or her
children's frocks, the probabilities are largely indicative that she would
never have come to the Retreat insane.
This case, so homely in its presentation, is one representative of many,
especially of persons who live in the country portions of New England, a
little more pronounced in character perhaps, and a little more exaggerated
in detail, but, nevertheless, it exhibits how insensibly and slowly
operate many of the influences existing among the ignorant, which
ultimately land victims in institutions for the insane.
The currents of thought and care have gone on day after day, and month
after month, from early morning until late at night in one ceaseless
round; wakeful and anxious often for children sick, for children who are
to be clothed and fed and schooled; anxious in reference to the thousand
and one household cares, which never lift from the brain of such a
mother; with no intellectual or social world outside the dark walls and
many times illy ventillated rooms of her own house; with no range of
thought on outside matters; with no one to interpose or even understand
the danger; with no books to read, or, if she had, no time to read
them;--in short, with no vision for time or eternity, beyond one unending
contest with cooking and scrubbing and mending,--what wonder that the poor
brain succumbs! The wonder rather is that it continues in working order so
long as it does without becoming utterly wrecked. More fresh,
health-giving air, more change, more holidays, more reading, more
gossiping, more of almost any thing to change the monotony of such a life,
to break the spell which so holds these poor women, and to lead their
minds in pastures more green, and by rivers whose waters are less stagnant
and bitter.
But below and far beyond this class of persons, there are the innumerable
ones who are born into a world of poverty and vice. It is their
inheritance from long lines of ancestry; they are crippled from the
beginning and have but half a chance in securing or retaining the prizes
of health and success.
In the great contest of life the weaker go to the wall. That term so
commonly now in use, "the survival of the fittest" in the struggle of
life, covers a large ground, and numberless are the tales of suffering,
want, and consequent disease which, hidden from the light of day, are
known only to the physician or the philanthropist. I hardly need refer to
the sanitary surroundings of those portions of our large cities, and those
of Europe, which are occupied by the poorer classes of society: the impure
air from overcrowding, the effect of which upon the delicate tissues of
the nervous system is deleterious in the highest degree; the lack of all
facilities for bathing; the insufficient, irregular, and often unwholesome
food-supply; the habit of drunkenness from the use of alcohol in some of
its worst preparations, and habits of daily tippling which keeps the brain
in a state of constant excitement; together with the immoral practices
which grow out of such surroundings and habits of life,--all tend strongly
in one direction.
By going through some of the hospitals for the insane in the vicinity of
New York, or those which are the recipients of the mental wrecks which
drift out of the lower grades of society, in the great manufacturing towns
and cities of this country or of England, one may gain some more vivid
conceptions of the influences which expend themselves upon the nervous
system among these poorer classes of society.
We have seen, in the spring season of the year, the trees of an orchard
white with unnumbered blossoms. Myriads on myriads feed every passing
breeze with delicious odors for a day, and then drop to the ground. And
when the fruit is formed from a very few only of these innumerable
blossoms on the trees, a limited number only of the whole attain to
maturity and perfection, while the ground is strewn with the windfalls and
the useless. Why the one goes on to maturity, while the other perishes so
prodigally and so soon, we may not say with certainty, but doubtless it is
due to some slight degree of advantage in the starting of the voyage; it
may be a moment or an hour of time, or a particle of nourishment, but to
whatsoever cause it may be due, it is sufficient, and there is no remedy.
So it is in the grand struggle of human life. Myriads perish at the very
start, and as the process of life goes forward, as its conditions become
complicated and antagonistic, one by one--always the weaker,--by reason of
some poverty in organization, inherited or acquired, falls out by the way,
while the vast procession of humanity presses on and upward on its
mysterious mission. So it has ever been in the past, and so it will be in
the future. The stronger in body and mind will rise above and triumph over
the hardnesses and roughnesses of life, becoming stronger by the very
effort of so doing. To him that hath shall be given, and he shall have an
abundance of the possessions of life, but that abundance is drawn from him
that has but little, and he falls out by the way, as the fruit untimely
falls from the tree. Many of these poverty-stricken ones are the
psychological windfalls of society.
Christianity has taught us to pick them up and try to nurse them to
strength for further battle. She has built hospitals and asylums of refuge
from the storm, into which these weaker ones drift, and here, at least for
the present, lies the field for her efforts toward ameliorating their
condition. It was true thousands of years ago that the poor were
everywhere and always present in all conditions of society. It has been so
since, and probably will always continue to be so, so long as society
continues; and we have no reason to expect other results from the
conditions of poverty hereafter than heretofore. Only as the number of its
victims may become fewer, through the influence of an education which will
enable persons to be self-supporting, will the grand total of mental
disease and the misery caused by it become less.