TUBERCULAR DISEASE. 207 



extent, be neutralised by the youth and vigour of 

 the mother, but when the mother has passed her 

 youth, the senility* of the father is invariably more 

 or less disastrous to the child. It is most wonderful 

 how many idiots, scrofulous and otherwise, instinctive 

 criminals, and drunkards, are found upon inquiry to 

 belong to the class whose mothers were no longer 

 young, and whose fathers were in the decline of life, 

 when they were begotten. This class also show how 

 small is their inheritance of vitality by falling a prey 

 in great numbers to tubercular affections. 



Looking upon the instinctive criminal as we do, 

 as the representative of a decaying race, we naturally 

 expect to find tubercular disease actively at work 

 among this class, and in such expectation we are 

 not disappointed. The fact is, the majority of this 

 wretched class die of tubercular and nervous diseases. 

 Here again the relationship of the tubercular and 

 nervous affections is to be noted. The instinctive 

 criminal class belong to the unfit; ."they are scrofu- 

 lous, not seldom deformed, with badly formed angular 

 heads ; are stupid, sluggish, deficient in vital energy, 

 and sometimes afflicted with epilepsy. . . . They 

 spring from families in which insanity, epilepsy, or 

 some other neurosis exists, and the diseases from 

 which they suffer and of which they die are chiefly 

 tubercular diseases and diseases of the nervous 

 system." * Mr. Bruce Thomson, Marro, Lombroso, 

 Dr. Wey, and every other observer who has studied 

 * Maudsley's " Responsibility in Mental Disease." 



