ACQUIRED CHARACTERS 



ascendant and the descendant (homogeneous inheritance). 

 In many of these cases the psychosis has even in both 

 generations the same form, and its outbreak depends 

 on the same accessory causes, e.g. parturition (uniform 

 inheritance). 



" (/3) The recurrence of suicide l throughout successive 

 generations is an equivalent phenomenon belonging to the 

 same class, i.e. the tendency to suicide, which is almost 

 always a symptom of melancholia or of a neuropsychopathic 

 constitution which is unable to endure arduous condi- 

 tions of life. Particularly convincing are those cases of 

 suicide in which ascendant and descendant destroy them- 

 selves under almost the same conditions of life and at 

 a similar age. Genealogical tables actually exist which 

 show that whole unhappy families have died out through 

 suicide. 2 



" (7) Equally certain are the hereditary effects of constitu- 

 tional neuropathies, though they may only consist in a 

 habitual migraine or in a hysteria or epilepsy. 3 



" The hereditary morbid factor may make itself felt in the 

 descendants in a mere neuropathic constitution, in the pro- 

 duction of neuroses, but also of psychoses, even to idiocy, as 

 the worst form of hereditary degeneration. 



" (S) The hereditary influence of pathological character in 

 tending to insanity is firmly established. 



"Visionaries, perverse, eccentric characters, oddities, or 

 hypochondriacs have not- only extremely often ascendants 



1 Tigges, Vierteljahrschr.f. Psychiatric, 1868, No. 3, 4, p. 334. 



2 Morel, Traits des mal. ment. p. 404 ; Eibot, p. 147 ; Lucas, ii. p. 780 ; 

 Ann. Med. Psych. May 1844, p. 389. 



3 Trousseau, Med. Klin. German by Culmann, 1867, p. 88 ; Moreau (op. 

 cit.) found among 364 epileptics 62 epil., 17 hyster., 37 apoplect., 38 insane rela- 

 tives, 195 times convulsions, consumption, scrofula, eclampsia, asthma, dipso- 

 mania, etc., among the parents or relatives ; Martin, Ann. Mid. Psych. Novem- 

 ber 1878, shows that the children of epileptics die in large numbers in convul- 



