A FAMILY OF DEGENERATES 123 



indicated as normal in the chart simply because they 

 were not known to be abnormal. What they really 

 were, or what they would become later in life, is a 

 point of the greatest interest which I am unable 

 to answer. As Clouston* has put it, " the 

 weak and troublesome point of all studies of 

 heredity is that they cannot be regarded as com- 

 plete till all the subjects of them are dead ; " the 

 obvioas reason for this being that at any time 

 during life it is possible for hitherto latent tenden- 

 cies to display themselves, or (within certain limits) 

 for more children to be born who may or may not 

 have further manifestations of the conditions under 

 observation. A very striking example of this has 

 come under my own notice in the case of a man 

 who had been epileptic from his youth, and who 

 had a nephew — out of the line of direct descent, 

 be it noted — who only became epileptic at the age of 

 fifty-seven : this condition (and I can vouch for it, as 

 I examined him myself, and had him under observa- 

 tion for months) being a true epilepsy, and not 

 traumatic or due to syphilis. Now, in this particular 

 case, if this second person had died before reaching 

 the age of fifty-seven years, none of his epileptic 

 manifestations would ever have been displayed, and 

 the uncle might then have remained the only member 

 of the family group who was known to have dis- 

 played any of the phenomena of that disease. 



The sociological importance of a knowledge of 



* Clinical Lectures on Mental Disease, ed. 6, 1904, p. 620. 



