MARRIAGE AND INSANITY. 103 



discretion is arrived at at a much earlier age than 

 formerly. To this I have two objections first, that 

 suicide was almost unknown amongst the children of 

 the classes of fifty years ago, although they were 

 highly educated, and frequently at an early age ; and 

 second, that this argument must be based upon the 

 assumption that suicide is the outcome of healthy 

 reasoning, which I think few will admit. Education, 

 forced at too early an age, has doubtless something 

 to do with this lamentable increase of child suicide, 

 inasmuch as it conduces to the building up of those 

 disordered nervous conditions from which is evolved 

 the insane temperament ; or it may act as an exciting 

 cause in an ill-balanced and ill-developed mind, but 

 beyond this it is seldom responsible for these child 

 suicides. The real cause is inherited taint, just as it 

 is in the adult. Some hereditary defect will be found 

 in all sucH cases, if a sufficiently careful search be 

 made. " If the child's family history be inquired into, 

 it will usually be found that a line of suicide, or of 

 melancholic depression with suicidal tendency, runs 

 through it. So it comes to pass that a slight cause of 

 vexation is sufficient to strike and make vibrate the 

 fundamental life-sick note of its nature. " * 



The next most regularly transmitted diseased nervous 

 condition is dipsomania. This we will consider later, 

 and for the present pass on to 



Melancholia. This, which is one of the most painful 

 forms which mental disease can assume, has long been 

 * Maudsley in Fortnightly Review, May 1886. 



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