home. Two uncles remained under care, but all the members of one household are out of the hospital. If a wise hospital superintendent can solve such a difficult problem, the result can be duplicated in many instances by field physicians working in consonance with after-care people. Actual prophylactic work will be impossible under close medical and lay organization, and definite results be reached. The discharged patient will return to fewer difficulties. The improved environment will produce fewer patients.—Albert W. Ferris.
(1630)
INSANITY, STATISTICS OF
The United States Census gives the following
facts about insanity in the United States:
Total Insane:
1890 In hospitals 74,028. Total 106,485.
1906 In hospitals 150,151. (Total not given).
1903 Males in Hospital 78,523
Females 71,628
Hospitals:
Public, 226; private, 102.
Twenty-two and one-half per cent. of the insane were persons in some out of door occupation and 16 per cent. in manufacturing or some indoor occupation, but the proportion in each case to the whole number respectively so employed is not given.
The percentage proportioned to population of whites is greater than of blacks. None of the insane reported were under twelve years of age.
(1631)
Inscrutability of God—See God's Inscrutability. INSECT, A MODEL Mark Isambard Brunel, the great engineer, was standing one day, about three-quarters of a century ago, in a ship-yard watching the movements of an animal known as the Teredo navales—in English, the naval wood-worm—when a brilliant thought suddenly occurred to him. He saw that this creature bored its way into the piece of wood upon which it was operating by means of a very extraordinary mechanical apparatus. Looking at the animal attentively through a microscope, he found that it was covered in front with a pair of valvular shells; that with its foot as a purchase, it communicated a rotary motion and a forward impulse to the valves, which, acting upon the wood like a gimlet, penetrated its substance; and that as the particles of wood were loosened, they passed through a fissure in the foot and thence through the body of the borer to its mouth, where they were expelled. "Here," said Brunel to himself, "is the sort of thing I want. Can I reproduce it in artificial form?" He forthwith set to work, and the final result of his labors, after many failures, was the famous boring-shield with which the Thames tunnel was excavated. This story was told by Brunel himself, and there is no reason to doubt its truth. The keen observer can draw useful lessons from the humblest of the works of God.—New York Ledger.
(1632)
INSECTS OF REMOTE TIMES Discoveries in the coal-mines of central France have furnished by far the greatest advance that has ever been made in our knowledge of the insects which inhabited the world millions of years, as geologists believe, before the time when man made his appearance upon the earth. In that wonderful age when the carboniferous plants, whose remains constitute the coal-beds of to-day, were alive and flourishing, the air and the soil were animated by the presence of flies, grasshoppers, cockroaches, dragon-flies, spiders, locusts, and scores of other species which exist but slightly changed at the present time. But the insects of those remote times attained a gigantic size, some of the dragon-flies measuring two feet from tip to tip of their expanded wings. The remains of these insects have been marvelously preserved in the strata of coal and rock.—Harper's Weekly.
(1633)
Insecurity—See Human Nature, Insecurity of.
INSENSITIVENESS TO BEAUTY
I remember walking at night with a good
fellow by the side of a transparent sea;
nothing was heard but the eternal murmur of
the restless waters on the pebbles; a full
moon was making a path of heavenly splendor
across the waves. It was a night of
supernatural beauty—a night in whose
silence all the voices of the universe were
speaking to the soul. His complaint was
that there was no band. (Text.)
(1634)
Insignificance—See Resources, God's.
INSINCERITY
There is no place where human nature can
be studied to better advantage, or public
opinion be more quickly ascertained, than in
