the conveyance of impressions and ideas as well as their rooting in the mind, and upon this fact educational endeavor is based. Mental waves affect multitudes as they do individuals, but degrees of predisposition and resistance make the effect transient or lasting, as in physical disease. Whether they arouse buoyant enthusiasm or shrinking fear; create admiration for national heroes or sympathy for foul murderers; strike with cyclonic violence and rapidity, simultaneous with inception, or manifest along slowly-traced lines, the gathered force depends upon an identical principle and is subject to the same developing conditions as the primary suggestive idea. Generic diversity of effect does not refute generic identity of cause. Individual symptoms will vary, prove elusive and doubtful as to final form, but they constitute disease. The clearer the conception and the deeper the study of cause and its ramifications, the easier the recognition of early indications and the less excusable both existence and prevalence. Ought one who has been mentally diseased to marry? This question involves more especially heredity and vice. If a descendant of a degenerated family with marked hysteria, neurasthenia and suicidal tendencies, the answer must surely be in the negative. The predisposition to the resulting diseases, epilepsy, imbecility and idiocy is more particularly inherited than the diseases themselves, and, fortunately, the hereditary fatality is often obviated by sterility. On the other side, the offspring is considered exempt if the parent has become subject to a maniacal crisis of shorter or longer duration consequent upon a serious fever, parturition, pneumonia and strong emotions when mentally overworked. The taint of insanity does not as a rule result from consanguineous marriages unless, like unions within a restricted family circle, this is repeated during several generations. Still a debatable question, the weight of opinion favors the conclusion of premature de cline and the emphasizing of transmissible features, more or less morbid. On account of these lurking possibilities, bloodalliances may rightly be looked upon as daring experiments opposed to the best interests of family and community. A greater danger, undoubtedly, are the more frequent unions between individuals with little or no care concerning antecedents and tolerated with an equally reckless disregard for the common good. In regard to mental and bodily disease as acquired factors, the relative importance varies with sex, but in hereditary transmission the psychical element prevails among women. Cognizant of undeniable facts that force themselves upon observation, and of psychological subtleties whose desultory nature and appearance require watchful scrutiny to decide whether the mental oscillations are within or swinging beyond rational bounds, the duty of public caretakers cannot be doubtful, but demands unabated vigilance. Not satisfactorily expressed by bringing an everincreasing number of our fellowmen within guarded enclosures, prevention is a more logical course than commitment. Although the trend is toward improved methods and well-planned reformatory efforts are manifest in various directions, it still remains a matter of reproof that our precautions are extremely lax in regard to those who suffer from or are threatened by mental decay. In the same proportion as we recognize that many causes contribute to produce the evil, we also acknowledge that the influence to check its growing activity belongs to a large group of agencies. Nevertheless, the principal effective remedy must evolve from concerted action on the part of the medical profession and the public itself. Whatever perplexity may have attended honest medical endeavor to trace the silent working of clouded brains; whatever failure has resulted from interpreting their secrets by vague premonitions, and wherever cunning abuse has succeeded in making insanity cover moral depravity, such shortcomings or faults can neither justify hypercritical judgment nor the placid indifference of citizens. If, on the contrary, considered an eminent matter of foresight and effect, it is only a fair presumption that to inspire confidence in protective methods, the educators themselves should be able and painstaking. This criterion appears, nevertheless, an essential cause of failure. We have efficient alienists and psychologists, but as a body medical men cannot lay claim to such knowledge of mental disease that by timely detection and practical measures their services become valuable. If it were otherwise, there would be more healthy brains in our homes, fewer decaying ones in our hospitals. If not entirely in recognition of their own helplessness, then through easy-going optimism and lack of strict requirements in regard to early watchfulness and remedial steps, physicians have yielded the supervision of germinating stages to family discretion. Because no enforcement exists, the supposition would either be that no effective assistance is available or intervention neither necessary nor beneficial. If ever held as a logically safe conclusion, such premises are to-day bereft of all but the danger they have inadvertently created. As insanity in all its stages presents a problem of public health, the layman no less than the professional becomes an indispensable factor in building and maintaining a sane community. To this end it is imperative to disseminate a general conviction that, first of all, insanity is neither a moral defect nor a disgrace, but a disease whose wilful neglect alone deserves public obloquy. Therefore should every home, rich or poor, be open to benevolent but strict scrutiny, unobstructed by ignorant false pride and hysterical interference on the part of parents and guardians. It would have to be investigation that truly investigates, and not a perfunctory form. The measure must be aided as much by civic intellectuality as by legal demand, and in the in terest of the race as well as in that of the individual. The result will certainly prove appalling at first and raise statistics to an astonishing height when compared with those already presented by incarcerated fellow-beings, but the step will ultimately reduce quantity and improve quality according to promptness and sanatory efficiency. As an argument to the contrary, it is hardly a tenable position to claim that the multiplying numbers in our insane asylums indicate diminishing infection outside of those institutions, nor is it proof of increased alertness on the part of lunacy commissions. Generally a last refuge, it is recruited from the unknown afflicted multitude whose neglected existence stands revealed in this manner. No juggling with figures nor optimistic presumption can successfully disprove the need of what ought to be done or create satisfaction with that which is attempted, however meritorious, under existing limitations. Because psychic decay has a longer period of incubation than physical degeneration, and we have to deal with diseased individuality rather than with disease, such fact is at once both a hopeful and a saving clause. To the well-instructed and broadened intellect, therefore, early and searching investigation within an enlarged area can mean but mutual protection whereby decadent childhood and mature age may escape the fate of adjudicated and frequently hopeless insanity, and can never be viewed in the light of odious, imposed duty to lay bare secrets of an intimate nature. a As harmonious correlation of mental and bodily activity depends upon natural energetic life, prophylaxis offers the most effective means because it preserves and upholds the very conditions which develop without overtaxing individual strength. It advises healthy environment as an absolute necessity at all periods of mental disease. The home atmosphere rarely possesses an influence desirable for supersensitive natures whose unmodified contact with daily exigencies hastens the climax. Agglomeration of weakened brains produces an even worse effect and is the objectionable feature of every institution intended to lessen the strain and eventually conquer the malady. For this reason most sanatoria and lately also a few insane hospitals have endeavored to mitigate the detrimental result from unwholesome environment by adopting the cottage plan. The small Belgian town, Gheel, has for centuries successfully proved to the world its philanthropic and restorative value. The director, Dr. J. A. Peeters, refers with proud satisfaction to its kind-hearted and tactful peasant-inhabitants, scattered over a vast surface, as invaluable assistants by whom even the terms "lunatic" and "insane' are banished and their charges spoken of only as "friends." Universally admired as a practical and effective method and recognized as a simplified humanitarian principle, why then so imperfectly and slowly imitated in a progressive country rich in land and means? It should not be lost sight of by our legislators when discussing appropriations for housing the insane, and although here the erection and proper equipment of numerous widely distributed pavilions involves greater expense than huge buildings, the principal purpose is to offer their inmates the best chances for recovery and not to provide room for the largest number possible at the least cost. Such a beneficial exchange for packed wards and resounding noises legitimates as economy lavish outlay, while its motive exemplifies a humane act. Willing though we may be to sacrifice wealth for the comfort of blighted lives, our greater privilege is to brighten the path before it has grown dim and dark. Only the searchlight of reason and knowledge can guide these promptings of pity and sympathy and make them beneficial. "Physicians are expected under the law to report each case of diphtheria and croup, scarlet fever, cholera, smallpox, measles, cerebro-spinal meningitis, chicken-pox, typhus, typhoid fever, laryngeal and pulmonary consumption, to which they may be called." Impelled by the greater prevalence and ravage of certain diseases like diphtheria and tuberculosis, demanding a wider and more effective scope of preventive measures, the medical profession has repeatedly been reminded of its neglect to report. Nevertheless, as the Board of Health regrets, the "expectation under the law” remains without conscientious fulfilment, but continues to be largely considered an optional course. A similar injunction regarding vigilance in cases of insanity does not exist, however, nor do the weekly public reports refer to this phase of communal health. Why exclude this fell disease from the dangerous class and exempt its study and prevention from professional duty under the law? Why not summon the combined efforts of legislature, medicine and public conscience in its behalf? Coöperation once established, the alienist will not only be assured of more freedom as an early observer, but physicians enabled to render efficient assistance and the monomaniacal tendencies of the day be prevented from becoming a dominant and ruining disease. Seemingly a plea for immediate action in a case of emergency, it is absurd because necessary and mortifying because true. This blindness to both truth and necessity is the result of incongruous opinions on the part of a sane majority that might reasonably be expected to dictate and exact obedience of rules assuring its self-preservation. Boston, Mass. HENRIK G. PETERSEN. IT PRESENT STATUS OF THE REFERENDUM MOVE MENT IN MAINE. BY ABNER W. NICHOLS. T IS assured to a moral certainty that the next Maine legislature will pass a resolution permitting the people themselves to determine by majority-vote whether or not the principles of the peoples' veto and a direct initiative shall be incorporated into the constitution of the state. Both the Republican and Democratic parties are pledged to such a course in plain terms. This has not been accomplished through the efforts of those corporations that are now enjoying a private monopoly of Maine's public utilities, nor of the wildland owners, nor the tax-dodgers, nor even through the efforts of the political bosses; nor was this a concession made to the demands of organized labor, even though the organized workers did bear all of the expenses of presenting the measure to the last legislature and of the accompanying campaign of agitation and education. It has been brought about through sheer force of popular sentiment. Out of the agitation which has been conducted by the Referendum League, the State Federation of Labor, the State Grange, and the rapidly increasing number of active advocates of the referendum principle, has developed a public opinion which refuses to be sidetracked. When politicians press upon other issues the notice of the people, instead of diverting their attention from the referendum idea, the opposite result is arrived at, for the voters proceed to consider the new issue in the light of the application of referendum methods to its solution. The people of Maine intend to have the referendum; and in many localities where the agilation has been concentrated and intense, the people are already using it, are actually learning self-government by practical experience, just as one learns to drive a nail by driving a nail, not alone by watching others. For instance: In Augusta the atmosphere is so thoroughly permeated with the referendum idea that when last spring petitions, bearing the names of 660 citizens, were presented to the City Council favoring the purchase of certain properties from private parties for a public park, and when, at about the same time, an order was introduced into the Council for the appropriation of $40,000 for the permanent improvement on suburban roads, it seemed the most natural thing to do, and, as a matter of course, the Council did refer both questions to the voters, who took such a lively interest in the problems and spoke at the ballot-box in such decisive terms that the people generally were delighted, not merely with the final results, but particularly with the methods employed. The sentiment was much in evidence that the question had not only been settled right, but that it had been settled in the right way. 669 voters signed the petitions in favor of the park scheme when personally asked to do so, yet when the doors of the votingbooths were closed behind them and they realized their independence of outside influences, they marked their ballots as in their judgment was best for themselves, and the result was only 160 votes in favor with 669 against. Not one in ten voted as they had petitioned. Soon after the vote was taken, the writer overheard a prominent business man remark that if this matter had come up three years ago, before the agitation for the referendum, the city would have paid $70,000 for parks they did not want, and would have gone without $40,000 worth of good roads they did want, and his remark but voiced the general sentiment. There are a great many people in Maine who are now convinced that whether general business shall continue to be good and the people to prosper depends absolutely upon taking away from vendable legislators the power to finally pass laws the people do not want. Doubtless much of the success of the movement has been due to strict adherence on the part of its promoters to their policy of pointing out and persistently keeping before the people its direct connection with and bearing upon issues for and against which there has already developed a strong popular sentiment; for experience teaches that interest in public affairs develop as fast and no faster than people recognize their connection with their own affairs. It matters not whether one realizes the fact as a fact, yet it is a fact just the same, that the real, the true, the genuine wellbeing of the individual is bound up in the well-being of the people as a whole. The far-sightedness or ability to recognize one's own individual interests as involved with interests common to all, is the one distinguishing feature which differentiates the statesman from the demagogue, the patriot from the grafter, and the philanthropist from the miser. We should all be patriots if we were able to locate and identify our own best interests where they actually are. We shall become patriots as fast as we arrive at a full realization of the fact that no matter how we get our living, we get a better one and get it easier when general business is good and the greatest number of people are prosperous. It is contrary to nature that men should appreciate this fact to the extent of being actually conscious of it, so that the idea shall control their actions, simply being told of it, any more than one learns to play the cornet simply by being told how. But when under the referendum a voter is called upon to decide a question in which his own wellbeing is involved with that of others or of the people as a whole, every effort to discover how his own individual interests are likely to be affected must react upon himself after the manner and in the sense of a course of intellectual athletics, and the inevitable result must be that the voter will be better prepared to consider the next public question. The common people of Maine were already alive to the futility of appealing to a legislature selected and controlled by those who through such control were securing for themselves special privileges and immunity from taxes. They were convinced that it did not lay in the power of the people, by any method at present available, to secure the passage of laws to make taxes even a little more fair and equal, to protect the people from being robbed of their wild-lands and valuable franchises, or to prevent monopoly in both the necessaries of life and the means of acquiring them. They could readily understand how men or corporations worth a few millions, but paying taxes on only a few thousands, could afford to pay for the defeat of a measure that would compel them to pay their full tax. They had learned, to their disappointment and cost, that after legislators had got their election, the influence of a great many of the common people, who had perhaps helped to elect them, was often far outweighed by the influence of a few to whom some particular legislative act would be worth a large amount. They felt that the influence of those who control legislation for their own personal profit, was direct and effective, while their own was remote, unavailing, and usually abortive, and that both those legislators who are bought and those corporations who buy are anxious to perpetuate the existing system. Is it any wonder that the plain people of Maine are outspoken and emphatic in favor of a system which gives themselves a larger, more direct and therefore more effective influence on the making of their own laws? The people of Maine are already interested in the liquor question, and the political parties bid against each other |