MARRIAGE AND INSANITY. 97 



becoming a parent, should carefully examine the 

 family tree, get to understand exactly his own posi- 

 tion, then lay the whole case candidly and honestly 

 before the physician, and abide by his decision. 



Further, I would advise that all persons who con- 

 template matrimony, all to whom attentions and 

 overtures are being made with a view to marriage, 

 should look upon a mutual exchange of confidences 

 upon this matter of hereditary or family disease as 

 absolutely essential, and that, too, at an early period 

 of the intimacy, before the affections have become 

 deeply engaged. Too often knowledge of the existence 

 of the family skeleton, when given at all, is only given 

 when matters have gone so far that only those of 

 strong will find it possible to give up the loved one 

 because of an evil so distant and shadowy as this 

 family taint appears in the eyes of the lover. 



In the majority of families in which mental disease 

 is transmitted, it appears in only one, two,, or three 

 members of each generation ; but those who do not be- 

 come insane often bear the taint as surely to the next 

 generation as do those who have actually been insane. 

 In rare cases, insanity or some allied nervous disease 

 attacks every member of a family, but before this state 

 of things is reached the family is very deeply saturated 

 with disease, and is fast approaching extinction. Cases 

 are on record in which as many as eleven members 

 of a family have been insane. I myself have met 

 with a case where, in a family of nine children, six 

 died within the first year of life, every one torn by 



