2 66 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



A STUDY OF BEITISH GENIUS. 



By HAVELOCK ELLIS. 

 VIII.— PATHOLOGY. 



"FN a large proportion of cases no reference is made by the national 

 -*- biographers to the diseases from which their subjects suffered, nor 

 to the general state of health. This, however, we could scarcely expect 

 to find, except in those cases in which the state of health had an obvious 

 influence on the life and work of the eminent person. In most of these 

 exceptional cases it is probable that the biographers have duly called at- 

 tention to the facts, and though the information thus attained is not 

 always precise — in part owing to the imperfection of the knowledge 

 transmitted, in part to the medical ignorance of the biographers, and in 

 part to the deliberate vagueness of their reference to 'a painful malady,' 

 etc. — it enables us to reach some very instructive conclusions concern- 

 ing the pathological conditions to which men of genius are most liable. 



Putting aside the cases of delicate health in childhood, with which 

 I have already dealt in a previous section, the national biographers state 

 the cause of death, or mention serious diseased conditions during life, in 

 322 cases. 



It is natural to find that certain diseased conditions which are very 

 common among the ordinary population are also very common among 

 men of preeminent intellectual ability. Thus, a lesion of the vessels 

 in the brain (the condition commonly described as paralysis, apoplexy, 

 effusion on the brain, etc.) is a very common cause of death among the 

 general population, and we also find that it is mentioned thirty-five 

 times by the national biographers. Consumption, also, so prevalent 

 among the general population, occurred in at least thirty cases. "While 

 many of the consumptive men of genius lived to past middle age, or 

 even reached a fairly advanced age, the disease is responsible for the 

 early death of most of the more eminent of those men of genius who 

 died young — of Keats in poetry, of Bonington and Girtin in art, of 

 Purcell (probably) in music. Some appear to have struggled with con- 

 sumptive tendencies during a fairly long life; these have usually been 

 men of letters, and have sometimes shown a feverish literary activity, 

 their intellectual output being perhaps more remarkable for quantity 

 than quality. But Sterne in literature, and Black, Priestley, Clifford 

 and other eminent men of science are to be found among the con- 

 sumptives. It is evident that the disease by no means stands in the way 

 of all but the very highest intellectual attainments, even if it is not in- 

 deed actually favorable to mental activity. 



