Insanity in Greece. The Hospital of Athens

Abstract

Little has been written, and comparatively little is known with precision, concerning the insane of Greece—whether we speak of the little kingdom alone, with its present population of nearly 2,500,000, or of the Greeks in general, who live in Macedonia, in Asia Minor, in Egypt, or elsewhere outside of the present limits of Greece. This whole community, diverse in origin and residence, but united by a common language and a common religion, considers itself as one, and sends to the two asylums in Greece—the old Phrenokomeion of Corfu (founded in 1838), and the comparatively new Dromokäiteion in Athens—insane persons from all the countries in which Greeks reside. Thus, during the year 1892 the Athenian Asylum (which takes its special name from a Greek family named Dromokäites, whose wealth has endowed it) received 70 admissions; and of these 13, or nearly one-fifth, came from places outside of Greece. A smaller proportion among the 175 (more or less) who now reside in the Corfu Asylum are from outside of Greece, and it is probable that this proportion is constantly diminishing there. But Athens, from its central position, its rank as a capital, and the affection with which most Greeks regard it, is likely to draw to itself more and more the persons attacked with insanity outside of Greece. This fact will increase a little the visible insanity of the kingdom; but so many are the causes tending to conceal the extent of this malady there that the circumstance of these outside accessions need hardly be taken into account. There is no census of the Greek insane, even professing to be exact, and I have been forced to rely, in my tours and inquiry during two visits to Greece (in 1890 and 1893), on the estimates of careful persons and my own observation.