262 MEMORIES OF MY LIFE 



parents and grandparents, together with a com- 

 posite of the race, each in their due proportions, 

 according to the Ancestral Law (see chapter on 

 Heredity). The result would be very instructive, but 

 the difficulty of obtaining the material is now over- 

 whelming. Male and female portraits blend well 

 together, with an epicene result. 



With the help of Dr. Mahomed and the per- 

 mission of the authorities of Guy's Hospital, I took 

 many photographs of consumptive patients and made 

 composites of them, which are published in the Guy's 

 Hospital Reports, vol. xxv. They show two con- 

 trasted types, the one fine and attenuated, the other 

 coarse and blunted. Dr. Mahomed was a very 

 promising physician, on the eve of becoming well 

 known, when he caught a fever of the same descrip- 

 tion, I am told, as that on which he had become an 

 authority, and died of it in his newly purchased 

 house. 



I could not make good composites of lunatics ; 

 their features are apt to be so irregular in different 

 ways that it was impossible to blend them. I took a 

 photographer with me to Hanwell, where it was 

 arranged that the patients should sit two at a time on 

 a bench. One of them was to be led forward and 

 posted in front of the camera, while his place on the 

 bench was filled by the second patient moving up 

 into it, whose previous place was to be occupied by a 

 third patient. It happened that the second of the 

 pair who were the first to occupy the bench considered 

 himself to be a very mighty man, I forget whom, but 

 let us say Alexander the Great. He boiled with 

 internal fury at not being given precedence, and when 



