In time all things shall be counted and weighed

yet not until Seventeen Ninety Eight 

did Monsieur Pinel, famed breaker of chains

which bound the insane pause to explain

that there were but four mental disorders;

madness had been drawn and quartered

and hung from above.

 

You might be manic or melancholic,

perhaps demented or idiotic

or suffer combinations of it;

Pinel knew his stuff.

 

With that absence of equivocation

shrinks use when they talk to patients,

he said four is quite enough.

 

There's no evidence that angry punters

disappointed at the lack of numbers

manned barricades or raised their voice

to express displeasure at the scanty choice;

what were they thinking of?

 

There was no audit but as near as dammit

a billion souls lived on the planet.

Now mankind's multiplied sixfold

and madness populates the globe.

Three hundred and ninety two maladies

discovered in the last two centuries.

We're being outstripped a hundred to six

by these burgeoning insanities.

 

The medicalisation of everyday life

isn't likely to keep me awake at night -

I never go without my sleeping tablets.

But how many planets shall we require

at some future date, so all can aspire

to their designated quota of madness?

 

Make that three hundred and ninety three.