TUBERCULAR DISEASE. 203 



their case often accompanied by the formation of pus, 

 while they have almost a monopoly of lupus, a disease 

 which often eats away considerable portions of the 

 face and other parts, and which appears to stand mid- 

 way between scrofula and cancer. 



Occasionally the mental faculties in the scrofulous 

 are preternaturally developed during early life, but 

 such development is exceptional ; as a rule, they are 

 dull, and altogether of a low type intellectually. 



It is evident from the foregoing brief and imperfect 

 descriptions that the scrofulous is a very much lower 

 type of degeneration than the phthisical, and, as we 

 would expect, we find it occurring much more com- 

 monly in association with other extreme forms of 

 degeneration, such as idiocy, imbecility, and physical 

 deformity. 



That the tubercular diathesis, whether of the 

 phthisical or scrofulous type, is a true degeneration, 

 is evident from its hereditary character, the frequency 

 with which it appears associated with other degenera- 

 tions in the individual, and the perfect interchange- 

 ability existing between it and most of the other 

 expressions of decay in the family. 



Of this relationship and interchangeability with 

 other signs of family decadence we could not have a 

 much better example than is offered in the family 

 history given at page 186, in the chapter on cancer. 

 In that case the cancerous father and neurotic mother 

 produced highly neurotic and cancerous male children, 

 while the females were so devitalised by the combined 



