CONSANGUINEOUS MARRIAGES. 279 



in healthy families, for such unions may wake up 

 some pathological character which has been latent for 

 one or two generations. 



In the next place, consanguineous marriages should 

 not be thought of in any family in which idiocy, 

 insanity, suicide, epilepsy, scrofula, phthisis, gout, 

 cancer, deaf-mutism, club-foot, cleft-palate, hare-lip, 

 rheumatism, heart-disease, chorea, neuralgia, or crime 

 is known to be hereditarily transmitted, or where they 

 have appeared in one or more generation, no matter 

 how far back. 



And finally, we must remember the effect of " social 

 consanguinity," and not be too exclusive in marriage. 

 Let royalty renew and oxidise its blue blood to arterial 

 crimson at the fountain of health, even if it have to 

 stoop to the life-giving stream. Let the noble im- 

 prove his condition physically, mentally (and finan- 

 cially) by espousing the pleb of the occidental Republic. 

 And if the diseased will marry, let him be unselfish 

 enough to consider those to follow him : let him 

 mitigate his innate unfitness so far as in him lies. 

 Let the neurotic take unto him the level-headed, and 

 the feeble the robust, and brave the anger of the blind 

 god Cupid. 



