456 Insanity. [Nov. 
and there, in an individual, the disease may not develop—but no such 
rule, remarks Dr. Burrowes, is observable. 
No fact, indeed, is more incontrovertible than the hereditariness of 
insanity, and no where is the effect more decisive than among tribes or 
families, where, in the well-understood language of the cattle breeder, 
they breed in and in. In our own country, hereditary insanity is more 
common in the higher ranks than in the lower—taking, we mean, num- 
bers for numbers ; and they confessedly mere frequently marry with 
those of their own rank, and often among their own families. Examples 
are said to be most numerous in old Scotch families ; and insanity is 
known to be more common in Scotland than in the rest of the country. 
Some centuries ago, the Scots were aware of the tendency, and provided 
against it—when a Scot was afflicted with a disease capable of being 
propagated, the sons were emasculated, and the daughters banished, aud 
any female affected by such disease, and pregnant, was burnt alive.* 
Of all people, perhaps, the Jews have most pertinaciously intermarried 
with each other, and hence insanity is believed to be more frequent 
among them. One of the youngest patients Dr. Burrowes ever had 
under his “care, was a member of a respectable Jewish family ; both 
father and mother were insane, and six brothers and sisters, like himself, 
became deranged as they arrived at the age of puberty. The Quakers, 
also, intermarry very much, and among them insanity is more than 
usually prevalent. Mr. Tuke, of the York Retreat, computes one in 
two hundred, and apparently, in a great degree, from this cause. 
Medical men distinguish insanity into types, or forms, or species— 
mania, melancholy, hypochondriasis, &c., but these several forms appa- 
rently propagate indiscriminately—that is, the maniac may beget a 
melancholic, and the contrary. Several forms of insanity, with various 
degrees of intellectual capacity, are sometimes developed in a large 
family. Of one, Dr. Burrowes observes—“ one son has transcendent 
talents, the second is inferior, the third has been for years in a state of 
fatuity, and the fourth is an idiot. That great wit and madness are 
nearly allied is not a poetical fiction—but the one is rarely, the other 
generally, an inheritance.” 
Sometimes it shews itself merely in eccentricities. Individuals are 
often distinguished by singularity of ideas or pursuits—or by equipage 
or dress unlike any body else. Generally there must be some obliquity: 
in the perception and judgment of such persons—“ they certainly,” says 
Dr. B., “do not perceive the difference between themselves and the 
generality (he is not speaking of mere fops), and many of these eccen- 
tricities, it is observable, if unnoticed or unchecked, grow more decided. 
with time, and ripen at last into perfect insanity.” 
Nor does the hereditary tendency, or predisposition, always break out 
into actual madness, nor are the offspring always inevitably doomed to 
experience the calamity to the full extent. It will sometimes also lie 
dormant till old age, and then appear ; and generally some pretty strong 
excitement seems required to develop it. But there are apparently the 
seeds and the soil, and there must always be danger of these seeds taking 
root, and maturing their fruits. It is, however, more decidedly in cases 
where there exists insanity, or the tendency, in both parents, that the 
effect is most inevitable. Where only one parent is so disposed, the 
* Boethius de Vet. Scot. Moribus. 
