HEREDITY IN INSANITY. 85 



we admit, as I hold we must, hereditary taint to be a 

 predisposing cause of insanity, we can come to no other 

 conclusion. There is no class of diseases so surely 

 transmitted from parent to child as the nervous upon 

 this point the whole medical profession is agreed ; and 

 that our present laws for the management of the insane 

 and those who have been insane tend directly to spread 

 insanity, epilepsy, and allied diseases amongst our 

 people, a moment's consideration will prove conclu- 

 sively. Take, for instance, the case of a young man 

 who, in consequence of inherited nervous instability, 

 becomes insane. He is treated in an asylum, and as 

 soon as he recovers from the acute attack he is dis- 

 charged, however bad his family history may be. 

 Being naturally impulsive and emotional, and having 

 but slight control over his passions, he not infrequently 

 marries early, perhaps a very short time after his dis- 

 charge from the asylum, and when he returns to the 

 asylum as he is almost certain to do he is probably 

 the father of two or three children. Again he recovers, 

 and again he returns home to beget a tainted race. 

 Ultimately, in all probability, this man returns to the 

 asylum to remain there, but before that stage in his 

 downward course is reached he has possibly left a large 

 family behind, some of whom will most likely join him 

 in the asylum before he dies. No large asylum is 

 without scores of such cases ; they make up a large part 

 of the moving population of such institutions. At 

 present one case comes to my recollection. It is that 

 mentioned in the last chapter, where a neurotic father 



