206 MARRIAGE AND DISEASE. 



occur in different members of the same family. No 

 physician in extensive practice but has met with 

 many such families."* On the same point Dr. 

 Maudsley writes : " There is no question in my mind 

 that insanity and phthisis are met with as con- 

 comitant or sequent effects in the course of family 

 decadence." t 



Again, it is a matter of common observation that 

 the children of the gouty and the syphilitic are 

 very frequently scrofulous, and to these, and the 

 insane taint, .aided by dissipation and enervating 

 luxuries, is to be attributed the appearance of a type 

 so degraded as the scrofulous among the children of 

 aristocratic and even royal families. 



Habitual drunkenness in the parents is another 

 fruitful source of the scrofulous temperament, but 

 this has already been shown to be so essentially 

 an expression of the neurotic type, that it is only 

 necessary to mention it here. 



Another cause of scrofula in children, and one 

 which gives further proof of the degenerate character 

 of the type, is senility in the parents. It has for 

 ages been popularly believed that the child begotten 

 of the aged father has not the vital energy and 

 recuperative power of the child of the father in his 

 prime ; and that this belief is well founded the 

 recent investigations of Marro, Dr. Langdon Down, 

 Korosi, and others prove conclusively. All observers 

 agree that the senility of the father may, to a great 



* Loc. cU. t "Pathology of Mind," p. 112. 



