EPILEPSY. 141 



not to marry." Great numbers of these afflicted ones 

 are at present detained in asylums and workhouses, 

 but this at present only can be done when the disease 

 has gone so far as to affect the mind sufficiently 

 seriously to render the sufferer insane in the eye of 

 the law, and before this stage is reached the epileptic 

 is frequently the parent of a family. 



Laws aiming at preventing epileptics becoming 

 parents have been known in times past,* and seeing 

 to what an extent our idiots, criminals, suicides, 

 drunkards, and insane are recruited from the offspring 

 of the epileptic, I think the Legislature would be fully 

 justified in forbidding the confirmed epileptic becoming 

 a parent, as a proceeding inimical to the weal of the 

 commonwealth. 



Legislation to this end is, perhaps, too much to 

 expect just at present, but the day when such a law 

 will appear on the statute-book is fast approaching. 

 The divine right of kings to govern, once as firmly 

 fixed as any canon of the Church, has disappeared 

 before the onward march of education and enlighten- 

 ment, and so shall what some are pleased to call 

 "the divine right of procreation." It may be said 

 that it is not necessary to interfere ; that if we leave 

 the whole affair to Nature she will right herself. 

 Undoubtedly. But that is exactly what we do not 

 do. If left to themselves, these wastrels from Nature's 

 workshop could not survive, they would succumb to 

 their own unfitness. But this happy consummation 

 * Boethius, " De Veterum Scotorum Moribus," lib. i 



