i io MARRIAGE AND DISEASE. 



In this family, as in that mentioned above, the 

 presence of the neurotic taint in both parents rendered 

 a reversion to the healthy type impossible, and Nature, 

 refusing to continue a family so degenerate, stamped 

 it out in the third generation. 



Now, what would the world have lost that it could 

 not well have spared, had the ancestors of these 

 wretched families been forbidden the right of procrea- 

 tion ? Nothing. It would have escaped an inestim- 

 able amount of suffering, past, present, and to come: 

 a considerable amount of pauperism and consequent 

 tax-gathering that is all. 



When the insane diathesis is present in only one 

 parent, even though it be deeply marked, it is gene- 

 rally possible by wise marriages to lessen, and even 

 perhaps in time completely to eradicate it. But 

 when both parents are of the insane temperament the 

 pathological character is so aggravated and deepened 

 in the offspring, that they are never able to shake it 

 off. Many of the children of such unions, as we have 

 seen above, die in childhood. A great number of the 

 remainder are sterile and deformed, and of those who 

 come to maturity, and are fruitful, few indeed live in 

 a second generation. The stock which springs from 

 parents both of the insane type, almost invariably 

 dies out in the second, or, at latest, third generation. 



Again, the influence of the insanity of a parent in 

 creating a predisposition in the offspring, will much 

 depend upon the time at which the mental disorder 

 has appeared, for while in every case its presence 



