Insanity. the marvelous. Monomania of suspicion, exaltation of jealousy, envy, want of confi dence. Monomania of vanity, exaltation of craving for applause, grandeur, of feeling of ambition. AFFECTIONS OF PROPENSITIES.-Dipsomania, incontrollable craving for stimulants. Homicidal mania, impulsive desire to destroy life. Kleptomania, incontrollable desire to acquire. This catalogue is not intended to be exhaustive. The departures from health will correspond not merely with the primitive mental powers and instincts, but with every possible combination of these, and with such complications as may result from hereditary predispositions, innate peculiarities, education, and habit.—Dr. Combe On Derangement; Copland's Dictionary, art. "Insanity.' For the disposal and treatment of the insane, see LUNATIC ASYLUM. INSANITY (ante), unsoundness of mind. Unhealthiness and unsoundness, according to general usage, are not synonymous terms when applied to the mind. A perfectly healthy mind requires a perfectly healthy body, and it also needs a certain healthy or normal training. The degree and also the quality of unhealthiness or unsoundness to constitute insanity must be such as to destroy a certain amount of the self-control of the individual, or to produce a degree of perversion of the intellectual or moral faculties. Modern alienists hold that such perversion is always connected with physical disease of some part of the nervous system. In most cases post-mortem examinations, as they are now made, reveal nervous lesions of some kind in all persons dying insane. Certain rules, useful, though sometimes empirical, for the diagnosis of insanity are adopted by physicians. Persons threatened with insanity are usually depressed in their manner, or are easily excited, the excitement being greatly out of proportion to the cause. A want of co-ordination of the faculties of the mind leads the subject to erroneous conclusions, and the formation, therefore, of false data; hallucinations appear, and the mind becomes completely unhinged. All forms of insanity have one important symptom in common, which is an impairment of the faculty of attention, arising, probably, from the loss of will. Delusions and hallucinations are, however, more certain symptoms, and clear ideas as to the definition of these terms are important. A delusion is more nearly connected with the mind; a hallucination is the result of an error in some sensory function. A man laboring under a delusion may believe that he is about to lose, or has lost, all his property when there is no foundation for such a belief, or that he is some other person, or that he is in possession of great riches. These delusions, therefore, may be of a gloomy or of a hopeful and exalted nature. A person laboring under a hallucination may imagine that he sees a spirit, or a person who does not exist, or different kinds of animals. In the temporary insanity of delirium tremens such hallucinations often occur. Hallucinations affecting the organs of taste and smell are common among the insane, and they are usually of an unpleasant character. Hallucinations of sight are common in those stages of insanity accompanied by exhaustion of the brain, when supernatural visions are likely to occur, and such patients often imagine that they hear voices commanding them to perform certain acts, often of a criminal nature, and of course they are then dangerous. Insane persons have a disposition to take off their clothes, sometimes probably from a feeling of oppression, sometimes with the idea of exposing the person. Insanity, especially that connected with epilepsy, often manifests itself in homicidal tendencies and acts. Although the qualities of insanity are infinitely various, as must be the result from the infinitely various parts of the nervous system which may be the cause of the aberrant phenomena, or the infinitely various ways in which those parts may be affected, still it is found convenient to classify the various forms into certain general groups, and the practice is not entirely empirical, but is connected with sound philosophy. The division of the older writers was mainly into mania, or violent insanity, and melancholy, with many subdivisions. There were then many fanciful distinctions because the researches of histological pathology had not connected physical phenomena with these causes. It was believed that physical disease was the chief cause, but what the nature of the ailment might be was not as well understood as now. Thomas Arnold, in 1802, made a classification into ideal, and notional, including over thirty varieties. Among certain sub-varieties, which he called pathetic, of which there were sixteen, were amorous, jealous, avaricious, misanthropic, suspicious, bashful, timid, sorrowful, etc. Pinel (q.v.), one of the original reformers in the treatment of the insane, made four principal divisions-mania, melancholy, dementia, and idiocy. Esquirol added monomania. Dr. Pritchard, in 1835, discriminated between moral and intellectual insanity, but many authorities do not recognize such a disease as moral insanity. That insanity is hereditary is now admitted by all alienists and physicians; also, that the inheritance is one of a physical nature, stamped deeply upon the typical structures of the organs of the body. Drunkenness is considered as one of the most powerful causes of insanity, and statistics support the opinion. The report of the commissioners of lunacy in England, in 1844, attribute 18 per cent of about 10,000 cases to the effect of alcohol. Dr. Benjamin Rush attributed the drinking of alcoholic liquors as the cause of more than one-third of the cases in America. Dr. W. B. Carpenter, of London, in his work on Mental Physiology, says that this indulgence weakens the will to that extent that control is lost over the emotions. Weakening Insanity. of the will is, indeed, one of the important features of insanity, and the powerful influence of the extreme use of opium and tobacco in this relation, as well as in weakening the memory, has been the personal experience of many. Dr. Maudsley believes that one of the most powerful causes of insanity is the eager pursuit of riches. He says: "In several instances in which the father has toiled upwards from poverty to vast wealth, with the aim and hope of founding a family, I have witnessed the results in a degeneracy, mental and physical, of his offspring, which has sometimes gone as far as extinction of the family in the third or fourth generation. When the evil is not so extreme as madness or ruinous vice, a mother's influence having been present, it may still be manifest in an instinctive cunning and duplicity, and an extreme selfishness of nature. I cannot but think, after what I have seen, that the extreme passion for getting rich, absorbing the whole energies of a life, does predispose to mental degeneration in the offspring-either to moral defect or to moral and intellectual deficiency, or to outbreaks of positive insanity under the conditions of life." Institutions for the Insane.-The history of the care of the insane is full of interest. Among the ancients mental disease was less frequent than in modern times, but there were cases of insanity, and these were looked upon with a degree of awe, and the disease was often held to be sacred. In modern times. until the present century, less regard has been paid to the humane treatment of the insane than in any other period of history; although, during the dark and middle ages, the ignorance upon the subject, and the unsettled state of public affairs, must have led to great neglect or cruelty. But neglect to the unfortunate lunatic was much preferable to the care he received when imprisoned within the walls of a madhouse, and subject to the will of a keeper, who was often chosen more on account of his physical than his moral or intellectual qualities. In Europe one of the first measures in the reform of institutions for the insane was made by Pinel, who, in 1792, liberated fifty-three patients at the Bicêtre from chains in which they were bound. But he had been preceded in the same direction by Dr. Franklin, with others, as early as 1750, in the organization of the Pennsylvania hospital, in which a department for the care of the insane was established. A system of treatment was there adopted which was afterwards practiced by Pinel. In England, during the 16th, 17th, and part of the 18th centuries, considerable attention appears to have been given to insane asylums, and lunatics often received comparatively kind treatment; but for various causes, which seem ever to be the accompaniments of human institutions, the management became bad, and the society of Friends, in 1792, established an institution called the "Retreat," which was so successful that the attention of the government was finally called to the subject. A commission was appointed by the house of commons, whose investigations revealed a horrible state of affairs. It was brought out in the evidence before them that it was customary, when lunatics were taken to Dublin, to tie them to the back of a cart and force them to walk the whole distance. About one in five lost an arm from this treatment. It was found, in one house where there were 23 confined-14 men and 9 women-and where 7 of the women were supported at their own expense, that one room on the ground floor, 21 by 16 ft., and 7 ft. high, contained only six cells, 9 ft. long and 5 ft. wide, with a passage of 3 ft. between. There were no windows, and no means for ventilation; and the door opened opposite a pigsty and dung heap about 7 ft. distant. Three cells had board floors, the other three were on the bare ground. The bedsteads consisted of wooden boxes, 6 ft. long and 2 wide, to which the patient was chained. These unfortunates were taken into the open air once a week, when the straw was changed. The patients were so dirty that careful inspection was impossible. In regard to treatment, the physician at Bethlem said: "Twice a year, with a few exceptious, the patients are bled, and after that they take vomits once a week for a number of weeks, and after that we purge them. That has been the practice for years, long before my time." The different forms of insanity are usually considered under the following divisions: 1. Melancholia; 2. Mania; 3. Dementia; 4. Imbecility; 5. Idiocy; 6. General Paralysis. Melancholy is usually preceded by hypochondria, and this is caused or accompanied with certain diseased conditions of the bodily organs, very frequently of the liver and digestive organs. The condition is often relieved by frequent administration of cathartics, combined with good diet, wine, iron, exercise, and recreation. When these remedies fail the patient will generally pass into a condition of mania. This is the case when the brain is the subject of degeneration through disease. This deprives the patient of the power of exercising the will; delusions and hallucinations supervene, and the condition becomes one of decided mania. Restraint often becomes necessary, but the tendency is to its abolishment as much as possible, it being rarely practiced except in the acute stages. Mania may be acute or chronic. When there is hereditary taint it may be caused by grief or disappointment; but peculiar forms accompany epilepsy and general paralysis of the insane. The subject of mania exhibits the presence of the disease generally by great mischievousness or filthiness or obscenity, or by all of them. The bodily health of a maniac often does not seem to suffer, but frequently there is great constipation, and serious disturbances are taking place in the cerebral substance, as post-mortem examinations often reveal; but often they are not of a nature to cause death. The strangest of all forms of insanity is what is called general paralysis of the insane, an affection not to be confounded with ordinary paralysis. It has been only Insanity. within the present century that the disease has been recognized. M. Calmeil gave a description of it in 1826, and since that time it has been carefully studied. It has three stages: 1. The stage of incubation; 2. The acute maniacal stage; 3. The chronic maniacal stage. A fourth stage might be added, that of dementia, but it is as well regarded as the sequel to or a part of the chronic stage. The subject of this grave disorder generally shows, at the commencement of the attack, a strangeness of manner which is different from that of all other forms of insanity, and which is usually casily recognized by the experienced alienist. The subjects are nearly always males. A man is observed depart suddenly from his ordinary habits; he seems to have lost his conscience; will make no apology for misconduct, of which he is constantly guilty. He fails to keep appointments, is often extremely immodest, and is easily roused to uncontrollable passion. As the disease advances he becomes suilen and more excitable, so that before long his friends are obliged to put him under restraint. He is prone to imagine himself a great personage, possessed of boundless power and riches, and boasts of performing the most wonderful feats of strength or agility, even after his disease has seriously impaired his bodily strength. In consequence of these peculiar delusions the French have called the disease manie des grandeurs. The speech becomes defective, accompanied by a peculiar stammer which is difficult to describe, but which is almost diagnostic to the experienced physician. Fits somewhat resembling those of epilepsy take place from time to time, but which are not at all amenable to treatment. A diagnostic distinction between these fits and those of true epilepsy is, that in the latter disease the patient usually bites his tongue, while the general paralytic does not as a rule. One important symptom is irregularity of the pupils of the eye. In 108 cases examined by Dr. Nasse, of Sieburg, irregularity was found in all but three; and Dr. Austin foundthe exceptions only two in 100. This, taken together with the other symptoms, is decisive. The average duration of the disease is about two years; sometimes it runs its course in a few weeks. Sometimes there is, for a short period, apparent recovery, and the patient may attempt to resume his occupation, but the attempt has always failed. The last stage, that of dementia, is truly pitiable; there is constant tremor, he loses his power to swallow, and will often cram food into his mouth until his checks are no longer capable of distension. The insanity which accompanies epilepsy, known as epileptic insanity, has been studied with care, and many important conclusions have been reached. In this form the acts of the subjects are extremely sudden and independent of the will, and are of a strong homicidal tendency, and after the attack has passed away they are unable to remember anything that has transpired. The pathology of insanity is an exceedingly interesting study. There is often, in addition to evidences of cerebral and membraneous congestion, thickening of the bones of the cranium, and adhesion and thickening of the dura mater. Blood cysts are often found in the arachnoid cavity, and there is great wasting of the cerebral substance, the brains of the insane weighing less than those of persons dying of other diseases. The treatment of the insane is often difficult, requiring an intricate knowledge of various diseases, and great experience among insane patients; but the most important element of success, under all circumstances, may be embraced in one word-humanity. The wretch who neglects or maltreats the unfortunate subject of mental derangement intrusted to his care, if not himself insane and irresponsible, should be regarded with universal contempt. According to the census of 1870-the latest official authority at present obtainablethe total number of insane persons in the United States (besides idiots, 24,477) was 37,382, in a population of 38.555,983. In England the total number of insane, including idiots, was, in 1870, 54,713, in a population of 22,090,000; in Scotland, 7.571, in a population of 3,222,837; and in Ireland, 17.194, not including idiots, in a population of 5,195,236. In France, in a population of 37,988,905. there were in 1866, of insane persons, 50,726. It may be estimated that the number of insane in Europe, in 1866, wag about 270,000. The following table includes a list of the public and many of the private insane asylums in the United States, with the number of patients: INSANITY BEFORE THE LAW. See LUNACY. Insectivorous. INSCRIPTIONS, a term applied to all writings engraved or written on objects or monuments not of the class of books, principally on hard materials, such as metals, stones, and other substances. They are a class of documents of the highest interest and importance to history and philology, and a consideration of them embraces the whole scope of history, language, and art. The oldest (excepting those of China) are probably the Egyptian inscriptions found in the pyramids (see PYRAMIDS), of about 2000 B.C.; to which succeed those of Assyria and Babylonia, reaching nearly as high an antiquity (see CUNEIFORM CHARACTERS); which are succeeded by the Persian and Median, 525 BC., and along with which prevailed the Phenician, probably about 700 B.C. (see PHENICIA); which were in their turn succeeded by the Greek, between 500 and 600 B.C., or even earlier; which were succeeded by the Etruscan and Roman, in 400-300 B.C., and continued through the middle ages in Europe to the present day. See PALEOGRAPHY. In the east, the oldest inscriptions are those of China, which ascend to 2278 BC.; those of India not being older than 315 B.C., or the age of Sandracottus; while the antiquity of the hieroglyphical inscriptions of Central America cannot be determined. Of many ancient nations, the history and language are found in inscriptions only, as in the case of Lycia and Etruria, and all official inscriptions have a certain authority, from their contemporaneous nature, and the care with which they were executed. Before the invention of paper or other light substances for the record of events, public acts, devotions, and other documents were inscribed on bronze, as the early treaties and dedications of the Greeks, or even lead, as certain small rolls of imprecation and others found in Greece; gold plates were inscribed and placed in foundations under the temples, as that of Canopus show; the exequaturs of consuls among the Greeks, and the discharges of the Roman soldiery, were inscribed on bronze tables; while charms, amulets, and other formulæ were occasionally inscribed on metals. The numerous inscriptions known, probably amounting to half a million, have been classed under public or official acts, tables of magistrates, military titles, lists of magistrates, those relating to the gymnasia or games, honors rendered to emperors or men, donations, rites, private and sepulchral, comprising epitaphs, some in elegiac and heroic verse, and numerous minor inscriptions on gems, vases, and other objects of ancient art, on wax tablets or pugillaria, and the scrawls discovered on the walls of public and private edifices, as at Pompeii and elsewhere. The study of the letters and their form will be seen under ALPHABET; that of the different languages and the mode of deciphering, under their respective heads. Those found upon coins will be mentioned in NUMISMATICS. The most remarkable inscriptions are the trilingual inscription of Rosetta, that of Shalmanazer on the obelisk of Nimrud, and the cylinder of Sennacherib; the trilingual inscription of Darius I. on the rock at Behistun; the Greek inscription of the soldiers of Psammetichus at Ibsamboul, and of the bronze helmet dedicated by Hiero I. to the Olympian Jupiter; the inscription on the coffin of the Cyprian king Asmumazer; the Etruscan inscription called the Eugubine tables; that of Mummius, the conqueror of Corinth, at Rome, and the will of Augustus at Ancyra; the inscription of the Ethiopian monarch Silco; the old monument of Yu, and the inscription of Se-gan-fu, recording the arrival of Christianity in China (631 A.D.); the inscriptions of Chandragupta and Asoka in India. The study of inscriptions is so difficult that it has formed a special branch of scholarship, such as decipherment for those of which the language has been lost, or epigraphy for the dead languages. Special collections of the inscriptions of different localities, and general ones, have been made of those in the same languages as Assyrian, Greek, Etruscan, Oscan, and Latin, by Gruter, Muratori, Böckh, Franz, Orellius, Mommsen, Letronne, Lebas, and others. Inscriptions have also engaged the scholarship and attention of the most accomplished philologists, with various success, from the end of the 17th century. They have been forged by Fourmont and others.-Gruter, Thesaurus Inser. (fo. 1603-63); Muratori, Novus Thesaurus (4to, 1739): Kellerman, Spec. Epigraph. (1841); Mommsen, Inscript. Neapol. (fo. 1852); Böckh and Franz, Corpus Inscript. Grae.; Osann, Sylloge (1822); Lepsius, Inser. Umbr. et Osc.; Gesenius, Script. Ling. Phon; Garucci, Graffiti. INSECT FERTILIZATION. See FECUNDATION. INSECTIV'ORA (Lat. insect eating), in Cuvier's system of zoology, one of the divisions of the mammalian order carnaria (q.v.). None of the insectivora are of large size; most of them are small timid creatures, generally nocturnal in their habits, and useful in the economy of nature chiefly in preventing the undue increase of worm and msect tribes. Although many of them are not exclusively insectivorous, all of them have the summits of the molar teeth beset with small conical tubercles, as for the purpose of breaking up the hard coverings of insect prey. Their dentition is otherwise very different in the different families. Their legs are short. They all place the whole sole of the foot on the ground. The snout is generally elongated. The families of talpida (moles, etc.), soricida (shrews, etc.), erinaceada (hedgehogs, etc.), and tupaida (banxrings) are referred to insectivora. The insectivora, although in some respects very different from the cheiroptera, exhibit an affinity to them in others. INSECTIVOROUS BIRDS. Recent investigations, especially in the western states and territories, have brought more fully into notice the valuable qualities of certain |