Of much greater importance is the best portion of your work, namely, _the prevention of insanity_. It is nevertheless true, and cannot be doubted, that in all civilized countries insanity increases in a manner which is out of proportion to the increase of the population. Much thought has been given to the cause of this phenomenon, and physicians as well as moralists, national economists as well as philosophers and philanthropists, have endeavored to fathom the connection between this fact and the conditions of modern social life. According to all observations, it is certain that the cause of this phenomenon is not a single etiological condition, but that it is the sum of a number of influences which act upon the human race and produce their travages in the mental and moral life of our patients. The conditions which give rise to this increase of insanity may be looked for in the manner in which modern civilization influences mankind, in its development and culture, in the family and in the school-room, in its views of life and habits; also in the manner in which civilization forces a man to fight a heavier and harder battle for pleasure and possessions, power and knowledge, and causes him to go even beyond his powers of endurance. More than even civilization itself, are at fault those pernicious abnormities, rare monstrosities, which are transmitted from generation to generation, or are also often newly developed and appear to belong to our civilization. If we want to prevent the increase of insanity, we must endeavor to do away with these monstrosities and eccentricities from our social life which remove mankind more and more, in a pernicious manner, from its natural development and from the normal conditions of moral and physical life; we must endeavor to kill these poisonous offshoots of pseudo civilization, which are the enemies of the normal existence of man. It is necessary to liberate the individual, as well as the entire society of modern times, from the potentiated egotism which spurs man on in overhaste, and in all departments of mental and physical life, to a feverish activity, and then leads to an early senile decay of both body and mind; from that terrible materialism which causes the modern individual in every class of society to find satisfaction in over excited taste and ingenious luxury. It is necessary to strengthen more than has been done heretofore the young, by means of their education, in their physical development, and at the same time to diminish, in proper proportion, the amount of mental over-exertion; and finally it is necessary to fight against, to do away with, those habits of modern society-life which have a pernicious influence upon the physical as well as the mental and moral organization of man. And of these latter, there is none so lasting in its effects, none so harmful to the physical as well as moral life, as the abuse of intoxicating liquors.