98 MARRIAGE AND DISEASE. 



convulsions, while two of the remaining three were 

 " weak in their minds," and the third was a jabbering 

 idiot, the inmate of an asylum. Such lamentable 

 cases are generally the result of marriages in which 

 both parents belong to the neurotic or insane type. 

 The deeper the taint the less likely are the children 

 to escape it, and nothing so certainly tends to deepen 

 the taint as "in and in" breeding. The children of 

 a person come of an insane stock will be infinitely 

 more likely to escape the family blight if that person 

 marry a healthy person, than if he marry one come 

 of a family like his own, and every effort should be 

 made to impress upon the public mind the danger of 

 inter-marriage amongst neurotic families. 



The person, man or woman, who has had an epileptic, 

 or choreic, or imbecile brother or sister, an insane uncle, 

 aunt, or parent, or even grandparent, should never for 

 a moment permit himself to look upon a member of 

 any neurotic family that is, one in which insanity, 

 epilepsy, habitual drunkenness, suicide, or imbecility 

 has at any time appeared as a probable, or even 

 possible, partner in marriage ; for although the disease 

 has appeared in but one or two members of the family 

 it shows that the tendency is there, and the chances of 

 the children not inheriting disease from such a union 

 will be very slight. Those of neurotic family should 

 never forget that the safety of their children wholly 

 depends upon their choice of partners. If they marry 

 one not of their own type the tendency to nervous 

 disease if not too deeply marked in themselves may 



