56 THE TREND OF THE RACE 



into Human Faculty). One case of two twin brothers reported by 

 Dr. Moreau is sufficiently striking to deserve quotation: "Physi- 

 cally the two young men are so nearly alike that the. one is 

 easily mistaken for the other. Morally, their resemblance is no 

 less complete and is most remarkable in its details. Thus, their 

 dominant ideas are absolutely the same. They both consider 

 themselves subject to imaginary persecutions; the same enemies 

 have sworn their destruction, and employ the same means to 

 effect it. Both have hallucinations of hearing. They are both of 

 them melancholy and morose; they never address a word to any- 

 body, and will hardly answer the questions that others address to 

 them. They always keep apart, and never communicate with one 

 another. An extremely curious fact which has frequently been 

 noted by the superintendents of their section of the hospital and 

 myself is this: From time to time, at very irregular intervals of 

 two, three, and many months, without appreciable cause, and by 

 the purely spontaneous effect of their illness, a very marked 

 change takes place in the condition of the two brothers. Both of 

 them, at the same time, and often on the same day, rouse them- 

 selves from their habitual stupor and prostration; they make the 

 same complaints, and they come of their own accord to the physi- 

 cian, with an urgent request to be liberated. I have seen this 

 strange thing occur, even when they were some miles apart, the 

 one being at Bicetre, and the other living at Saint-Anne." 1 



According to Schlub three-fourths of the cases of insanity 

 occurring in siblings is of the same type. The percentages of like 



1 Bajenoff (Quelques r6flections sur les folies g6mellaires et familiales, Arch. 

 internal, de Neur., n, s. I. 213-218, 1913), cites a number of cases of similar in- 

 sanity in twins; in one case reported by Harandon de Montyel two twin girls, 

 apparently identical, were married on the same day and became pregnant at about 

 the same time. Both were taken with delirium in early pregnancy and were con- 

 fined separately in the same asylum without either being apprised of the condition 

 of the other. Their insanities were pronounced "absolutely identical"; their 

 hallucinations were much the same and their spells occurred at the same time. 

 They were delivered within 48 hours of each other and soon afterward the insanity 

 in both subsided. Schultes (Ueber Zwillingspsychosen, Allg. Zelt.f. Psychiat., 1913, 

 348-364), reports on five cases of insanity in twins; four of these which were very 

 similar twins showed the same types of insanity. 



