136 MARRIAGE AND DISEASE. 



hereditary cases, either epilepsy alone, or epilepsy 

 combined with insanity of some kind in the direct 

 line of ancestors, and instances a case in which no 

 fewer than fourteen members of a family were afflicted 

 with the disease. Yet notwithstanding the fact that 

 epilepsy is thus transmitted unchanged with wonder- 

 ful regularity almost approaching in this respect the 

 suicidal impulse the taint not infrequently takes 

 other form in the offspring. As Dr. Clouston remarks, 

 "Hereditarily ordinary insanity and epilepsy are closely 

 allied. The son or daughter of an epileptic is just 

 as likely to be idiotic, weak-minded, drunken, or in- 

 sane, as to be epileptic ; and certainly, the children of 

 families with strong insane heredity are very com- 

 monly epileptic." * In truth, there are few families 

 showing the insane diathesis which have not epileptics 

 among their members. When the tendency to in- 

 sanity becomes deeply marked in a family, epilepsy 

 with idiocy, paralysis, squint, physical deformity, or 

 deaf-mutism added on, is almost certain to make its 

 appearance in some of the children, and when this 

 stage of degeneration is reached the extinction of the 

 family is at hand, such children being generally sterile. 

 Two families of which I have notes are good 

 examples of the fatal effect of insanity, combined 

 with epilepsy, upon the family. One is that already 

 mentioned at page 97, where, out of a family of nine 

 children, six died of "fits" during the first year of 

 life, and of the survivors, one was an idiot and the 

 * Loc. cit. 



