84 MARRIAGE AND HEREDITY 



turn to insanity in the child ; insanity may change 

 into a tendency to suicide, and the suicidal tendency 

 may become a mania for drinking. Given some brain 

 or nerve defect in a family, its ramifications may be 

 very widespread. Insanity in one member may be 

 accompanied in another by paralysis, scrofula, rickets, 

 or other irregularities. The present writer is ac- 

 quainted with a man who, having softening of the 

 brain, has a daughter addicted to drunkenness, who 

 in turn has a child with a club foot, Baillarger 

 insists upon the danger of insanity in all cases 

 where one's blood -relatives (father, mother, grand- 

 father, grandmother, aunts, brothers or sisters) have 

 been affected with weakness of mind, oddity of 

 character, great excitability, nervous affections, sui- 

 cidal tendency, or drunkenness, 



Mobius, Charcot, Fere, and other authorities of the 

 present day, link together an extensive group of brain 

 and nerve diseases, comprising insanity, with its milder 

 forms of eccentricity and violent temper, paralysis, 

 epilepsy, hysteria, neuralgia, scrofula, gout, diabetes, 

 deformities and malformations, consumption, asthma, 

 and dipsomania. All these affections may be found 

 alternating with each other in a given family, one 

 member suffering from one and another from another. 



