MARRIAGE AND DRUNKENNESS. 127 



or spasmodic forms of nervous disease, as suicide, acute 

 mania, epilepsy, and crime. The children of both are 

 peculiarly liable to convulsions, and death at an early 

 age from this cause is a frequent occurrence in such 

 families. 



This diseased condition, like any other hereditary 

 predisposition, may remain latent for a generation and 

 reappear unexpectedly in the next, but it is seldom 

 that it does not show in some member of the family, 

 more especially in those children which were begotten 

 after the disease had been active in the parent ; for, 

 as in other hereditary diseases, those children begotten 

 after the disease has declared itself by an acute attack 

 in the parent, are much more liable to inherit the pre- 

 disposition than those born before such outbreak, 

 these latter appearing at times to^ecape the blight 

 altogether. jp 



It is, perhaps, unnecessary to say that in this dis- 

 ease, as in the other neuroses, it is highly improper 

 that those in whom it is well marked should become 

 parents. They are unfitted by their inherited infirmity 

 to undertake the duties and responsibilities of married 

 life ; as husbands or wives, and as parents, they are 

 equally sad failures. They are always improvident, 

 and their early death often saddles the community 

 with the care of a helpless family, while of the chil- 

 dren it may be said that there is not sufficient chance 

 of their being useful to themselves or to the common- 

 wealth to justify their being brought into existence. 

 Above all, there should be no intermarriage among 



