134 MARRIAGE AND DISEASE. 



once in a hundred cases is it attributed, as it should 

 be, to inherited predisposition. This, I say, is un- 

 fortunate, for ignorance of the true character of the 

 disease can have but one effect its propagation. 



The people should be taught that epilepsy is, par 

 excellence, an hereditary affliction, that it is nearly 

 related to idiocy, and madness, and paralysis, and 

 deaf-mutism, and that no member of any family in 

 which it is known to be should be considered a person 

 who can with safety become a parent. Of course, there 

 are cases of epilepsy which arise from mechanical 

 injury to the head, or fright, or have their exciting 

 cause or starting-point *tn such irritation of the 

 nervous system as that., experienced during dentition 

 or the approach of puberty. Yet it must never be 

 forgotten, that even in these cases much depends 

 on family taint, and that epilepsy seldom attacks a 

 child who is not the unfortunate inheritor of a neur- 

 otic temperament. Indeed, were it otherwise, most 

 children must be epileptic, for all suffer the nervous 

 irritation and excitement consequent on dentition 

 and the approach of puberty and adolescence, and if 

 all were equally predisposed, all must equally suffer. 

 But while all suffer these irritations few become 

 epileptic, and it is perfectly clear from inquiry into 

 the family histories of those who do, that they are pre- 

 disposed by inheritance, else they too would escape. 



Epilepsy is, in fact, one of the most strongly heredi- 

 tary of all diseases. In this respect, it is on a footing 

 with the suicidal impulse, melancholia, drunkenness, 



