Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/86

 PREVENTION OF MENTAL DISEASES.

Physicians have always agreed that it is easier to prevent than to heal disease. This axiom finds constant confirmation, especially since hygiene has been tested by the experimental method, and since bacteriology has become one of the principal auxiliaries of medical methods with contagious and infectious diseases. States have become occupied with these questions because they have become urgent, and this interference increases as the field of action becomes more vast. If the physicians con- firm this axiom in respect to mental maladies, we are not able to say as much for the states, which, for the most part, stand still with folded hands before the ever-rising tide of mental alien- ation. If we except the Scandinavian countries, we may affirm that the states which see the progressive extension of human degeneration by the multiplication of causes which tend to develop mental diseases react in too tardy a manner against the terrible evil ; and that the measures taken against this arrest of development make themselves felt only in an inadequate degree. It is evident that physicians are helpless in this struggle, unless the state comes to their aid.

HEREDITY.

In studying the causes of mental diseases, and, therefore, of human degeneration, we must mention in the first place heredity. We inherit many diseases from our parents and forefathers, and, too often, we transmit them to our posterity. All, then, who are able to follow the course of men from the cradle, who observe the manner in which they receive their education, their conduct at school, their entrance into the world, can follow the painful plague of heredity, as they are likewise able to observe, within certain limits, its development. It is a great error to appeal to the alienist only when the evil has been fully revealed. It is important that every physician be constantly familiar with

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