322 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



II., of England, and stands as near the actual Palatine insanity as a 

 nephew. 



These six cases would, if occurring in families of ordinary social 

 grade, never make their way into asylum records as exhibiting a con- 

 genital tendency, since their close relations were not insane, but here, 

 where we have the family tree and can look up the ancestry, curiously 

 enough we find them all related and through the same source, "Pala- 

 tine, and this moreover the only one of their many lines of descent 

 in which there was insanity. This is to be thought of when regarding 

 the percentage which runs from twenty to 90 for heredity among 

 the insane, according to the observer, and it should make us think 

 that the higher rather than the lower figures are more likely to be 

 correct. 



This condition which caused the extinction of the House of Bruns- 

 wick in the male line is often considered a common one in aristocracy, 

 that is, a degeneration due to the assumption of rank and power, and 

 consequent tendency to ease, dissipation and decline. 



Jacobi has tried to show that the majority of royal and powerful 

 families tend to end in degeneration and sterility. Degeneration 

 without a corresponding pollution of blood, a contamination sufficient 

 in itself to explain the condition I believe to be exceedingly rare, and 

 I may say that there are no instances of such a degeneration among 

 all the royal families that I have studied. 



Among the 144 included in this group by reason of close relation- 

 ship, there are two in (10), three in (9) and seven in (8). These 

 are all centered about within two degrees of relationship of Charles 

 William Ferdinand who was probably the most celebrated of any 

 bearing the name of Brunswick. By making him the center of a 

 group of forty-one, including only those more closely related to him, 

 we find two in (10), three in (9), five in (8), eight in (7), that 

 is ^ of genius and of high talent. This is practically the same 

 group of geniuses that centered about Frederick the Great in Prussia. 

 It seems very probable on the grounds of heredity and entirely un- 

 likely on any other. 



