io8 MARRIAGE AND DISEASE. 



transmission the character gains prepotency ; becomes 

 more ingrained in the family nature, and so stands a 

 better chance of being transmitted again. Insanity 

 in uncles or aunts in the same line, added on to the 

 disease in parent and grandparent, of course increases 

 very greatly the gravity of the case ; showing, as it does, 

 the firm hold the disease has got upon the family. 



A predisposition to insanity in both parents, even 

 when it is not very deeply marked, is, as we have seen, 

 always most serious. In such cases there is little or 

 no chance of reversion to the healthy type. The 

 children very frequently take on some of the more 

 marked forms of nervous degeneracy, as idiocy or 

 imbecility, with epilepsy or some physical deformity 

 added on, as paralysis, club-foot, squint, blindness, 

 deaf-mutism, &c. Even when neither imbecile nor 

 deformed such children are very often sterile, and the 

 family rapidly becomes extinct. 



Here is the family tree of a patient of my own, which 

 shows the terrible effect of a double parental taint upon 

 the children : 



K S.'s FAMILY. 



