LESS IMPORTANT HEREDITARY AFFECTIONS. 311 



imbecile members in the family of the diabetic person.* 

 Diabetes is also very common in families in which 

 active insanity attacks some members. Drs. Maudsley, 

 Clouston, and others have pointed out this relationship 

 between insanity and diabetes. Dr. Savage, in a 

 paper which he read before the Medical Society of 

 London in November 1890, said that after a study of 

 forty patients in Bethlehem Hospital for the insane who 

 had diabetic relations, and ten patients who were at 

 once diabetic and insane, he came to the conclusion 

 that diabetes and insanity were closely related, and 

 that in such families the form of mental disorder most 

 common was melancholia. t 



This is another of the diseases which attack the 

 males of affected families much more frequently than 

 the females, the proportion of males to females being 

 about three to one. In males it generally makes its 

 appearance between thirty and forty years of age, but 

 in females much earlier, commonly between ten and 

 thirty years. 



All families in which diabetes occurs should be 

 looked upon with suspicion, and should epilepsy, 

 idiocy, insanity, or deaf-mutism also have appeared 

 in the family, it is a very grave question whether 

 marriage should be ventured upon. 



BRIGHT'S DISEASE. This disease, which depends 

 upon degenerative tissue-changes in the kidneys, is 

 often a hereditary affection. It is met with in various 



* Alexander Silver, in " Quain's Diet, of Medicine." 

 t Society's Transactions, 1890. 



