OF ARTS AND SCIENCES. 105 



this large number there does not seem to have been one undoubted case 

 of insanity ; and as kings and princes live in glass houses, if there had 

 been one such case, we should probably have heard of it. Not one 

 nndoubted case, we say ; for there is a doubtful one. The oldest of 

 the FitzClarences, created Earl of Munster, committed suicide in 1842 ; 

 and as he had shown great despondency for six weeks before his death, 

 so that a physician was at last called in, a coroner's jury, if one had sat 

 in his case, might have brought in a verdict of insanity ; and the phys- 

 iological fatalists, remembering his grandfather, would probably have 

 called it a case of hereditary insanity, overlooking the fifty-four other de- 

 scendants of George III., who have appeared as sane as other people. 



One such example as this of George III. appears conclusive against 

 the doctrine of the necessary hereditary transmission of mental disease. 

 We thus exorcise the terrific phantom which, as already said, has prob- 

 ably driven many persons mad. There is more than one prophecy, 

 the mere announcement of which has caused its own fulfilment. But 

 the case is not a solitary one. Observation among the families of his 

 own acquaintance. Professor Bowen remarked, always made on the prin- 

 ciple of collecting the negative as well as the affirmative instances, had 

 satisfied him, that the rule — that is, the law of nature — is against the 

 hereditary transmission. If there are apparent exceptions, the majority 

 of the descendants manifesting the same disease as the parent or ances- 

 tor, they are explicable through the action of sympathy, unconscious 

 imitation, or exaggerated fears proceeding from the cause just men- 

 tioned. Cases enough can be cited of the recurrence of the phenom- 

 enon from such causes, wherein the persons concerned were not related 

 by blood, so that inhei'ited disease was out of the question. 



Thus, up to 1839, there had not been for sixty years a case of suicide 

 by precipitation from the top of the London monument. In that year, 

 a young woman named Moyes threw herself off from it and was killed. 

 "Within three months, a boy only sixteen years old, whose previous con- 

 duct had shown nothing unusual, jumped oif with the same result. To 

 prevent another case, the keeper was required to accompany every person 

 who ascended the stairs. But before the year was ended, another young 

 woman, never before thought to be insane or to have any cause to wish 

 for death, contrived to elude him by going to the other side of the bal- 

 cony, where she also jumped oiF and was killed. Then, at last, the iron 

 railing of the balcony was carried up and united to the stone work 

 above, making a sort of cage which had no exit except by the stairs. 



VOL. V. 14 



