Think you have heard it all? Guess again. According to the head doctors in the early 1900s, dodging fast moving cars could give the nerves a jumble and cause a person to go crazy.
Going Too Fast
Sir J. Crichton Browne, renowned mental expert, has set Britishers to quaking with some facts and figures on lunacy. In 1910 England had under care 133,157 persons declared to be insane, an increase of 262 percent in 50 years, while the population has increased by only 85 percent, and, declares Sir Browne, it’s largely because the English are acquiring the American spirit of “hustling.”
The burden of bread winning is being transferred from muscles to nerves. Moreover, modern transportation is aiding in the general nervous breakdown. Every time you dodge an automobile or a street car, a sudden sharp demand is made upon your nerves. Ordinary city life is becoming more and more full of such demands, and hence, the lunatic asylums are filled up. Heredity and disease have little to do with it, says Sir Browne. The English speaking races are simply going it too fast.
Well, we don’t know much about this matter, but if you add to the folks made lunatic by dodging cars, autos and cycles, the people who drive those machines, we can account for some of the increase in lunacy, anyhow.
[Source: The Day Book (Chicago, Illinois newspaper). June 28, 1912.]
