344 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ety of marriage by persons who have themselves suffered from insan- 

 ity, or whose families are strongly tainted with insanity. You will 

 not be surprised to hear, I dare say, that I don't think any one who 

 consults me under such circumstances ever takes my advice except 

 when it happens to accord with his inclination. The anxious inquirer 

 comes to get, if he can, the opinion which he wishes for, and, if he 

 does not get that, he goes away sorrowful, and does just what his 

 feelings prompt that is, gets married when he has fallen in love, per- 

 suading himself that Nature will somehow make an exception to in- 

 exorable law in his favor, or that his love is sufficient justification of 

 a union in scorn of consequences. Certainly, I have never met with 

 so extreme a case as I chanced to light upon in a book a short time 

 ago. " I actually know a man," says the author, " who is so deeply 

 interested in the doctrine of crossing that every hour of his life is 

 devoted to the improvement of a race of bantam fowls and curious 

 pigeons, and who yet married a mad woman, whom he confines in a 

 garret, and by whom he has insane progeny." But I have met with 

 many instances which prove how little people are disposed to look 

 beyond their immediate gratification in the matter. If it were put to 

 two persons passionately in love with one another that they w y ould 

 have children, one of whom would certainly die prematurely of con- 

 sumption, another become insane, and a third, perhaps, commit sui- 

 cide, or end his days in w r orkhouse or jail, I am afraid that in three 

 cases out of four they would not practise self-denial and prevent so 

 great calamities, but self-gratification, and vaguely trust "the uni- 

 versal plan will all protect ! " 



Those who pay no regard in marriage to the evils which they 

 bring upon their children, or in their lives to the sins by which the 

 curse of a bad inheritance is visited upon them, may plead in excuse 

 or extenuation of themselves the vagueness and uncertainty of medi- 

 cal knowledge of the laws of hereditary action. We are unable to 

 give them exact and positive information when they apply to us, and 

 they naturally shelter themselves under the uncertainty. Were oui 

 knowledge exact, as we hope it will some day be, we could foretell 

 the result with positive certainty in each case, and so speak with more 

 weight of authority. It is one of the first and most pressing tasks 

 of medical inquiry to search and find out the laws of heredity, mental 

 :and bodily, in health and in disease, and, having discovered exactly 

 what they are, to apply the knowledge purposely to the improvement 

 of the race that is, to prevent its retrogression and to promote its 

 progress through the ages. I see no reason to doubt that by discov- 

 ery of these laws and intelligent practical use of our discoveries we 

 might in the fullness of time produce, if not a higher species of beings 

 than we are, a race of beings, at any rate, as superior to us as we are 

 superior to our primeval ancestors ; the imagination of men seems, 

 indeed, in the gods which they have created for themselves, to have 



