Who is Insane?
By Stephen Smith, A.M., M.D., LL.D. N. Y.: The Macmillan (Jo., 1916. Pp. 285. The immediate and obvious answer to the question is, “No one or every one.” Dr Smith’s own conviction is, “There can be no hard and fast lines drawn between large numbers of the sane and insane.” In reporting a conversation between himself and an insane woman, he comes close to a satisfactory definition of insanity when he says to her, “You, of course, are insane, for this reason, the law provides that only insane persons shall be confined in asylums for the insane, while the sane are rigidly excluded. Now, as between you and me, you are legally confined in this asylum, and I am legally excluded; therefore, when you called upon me for a decision as to who is insane, you or I, I could promptly and truthfully say, why you, of course, are insane.” Having gone so nearly far enough, Dr Smith turns aside from his quest for definition, and asserts that the term insanity “defines nothing and cannot be defined; it can only be explained.”
The promise of explanation is not fulfilled. The book is mainly a collection of gossippy and entertaining anecdotes about insane persons, trials of insane criminals, and the care of insane in asylums. At the end, the extreme brevity of his treatment of eugenics in relation to insanity causes the author to make some loose statements, like this,?” The best scholars in the public schools often come from the homes of the illiterate, who are popularly classed as feebleminded.” Had Dr Smith called his book, “Memoirs of an ex-State Commissioner in Lunacy,” the fitness of things would have been served, and students of psychiatry would not be misled into expecting that the book would contain material of scientific or diagnostic value.
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