If we consider the influence of the game in other respects as conducing to lack of moral sense, to alcoholic abuse (for without the seeming stimulation, but which is really the blunting of impressions which alcohol brings, the game would not be possible), to discontent, to mental enfeeblement, it is all bad.

Curiously enough the game is one which in all periods has been played by the idle, but its evil influence is greater now than before when it was the game of royalty chiefly, because there are now more people living from the work of others.
The unusual mental action of the insane not infrequently expresses itself by suicide.

The analysis of three hundred deaths from suicide showed pathological changes in the brain in forty-three per cent, and when we think that mental disturbances are very often without recognizable anatomical changes after death, the percentage is very large.

In another analysis of one hundred and twenty-four suicides forty-four of these were mentally affected to various degrees.

Five of the men and seven women were epileptics, in ten of the families there was hysteria, twenty-four of the men and four of the women were chronic alcoholics.
It is extremely difficult at the present time to say whether insanity is increasing.