Have you ever looked around and wondered if insanity is on the rise? Does it seem that the whole world is losing its mind? Are you increasingly convinced that sane people are in the minority?

Perhaps you aren’t imagining things. On Friday, August 2, 1912, the Vancouver Daily World carried an article under the headline, “Doctor Sees the World Going Mad.”

London, Aug. 2 — The vision of a mad world and an era of lunacy was prophesied by Dr. Forbes Winslow yesterday, while expressing this dissent from the statement made at the Eugenics Congress by Dr. Mott, that increases in lunacy is more apparent than realized. He said:

“There will be more lunatics in the world than sane people three hundred years hence. This prophecy is based on the present rate of returns. We are rapidly approaching a mad world. In every part of the world civilization is advancing and so insanity is bound to advance. There were 36,762 lunatics in 1859; there are now 135,000.”

He predicted this would happen in 300 years. By all accounts, we are well ahead of schedule.