i6 



religious beliefs, fanaticism, mysticism, spiritism, an unwholesome con- 

 tempt for traditional custom, social usages, and morality, a vain spirit of 

 spurious art and culture, a false self -loving vanity in the pursuit of a 

 sentimental altruism, or by eccentricities of all kinds; such signs of 

 degeneracy are often combined with talent and even genius, especially of 

 the constructive imaginative order; but the brilliant intellectual qualities 

 of a degenerate are invariably associated with either a lack of moral sense 

 or of sound judgment and highest control. ^Time, chance, circumstances, 

 and opportunities play an especially important part in moulding and 

 determining the career of a neurotic stock; circumstances and environ- 

 ment may favour one member and he rises on the tide of fortune to an 

 eminent position, whereas another, unfortunate or less fortunate, but with 

 a similar inborn temperament, dies in an asylum or commits suicide in 

 despair. X 



I have often found in the collecting of pedigrees the association of 

 insanity and suicide in a stock preceded by, or associated with, the exist- 

 ence of individuals possessing the melancholic, suspicious, brooding, self- 

 centred, hypochondriacal temperament; and it is not uncommon for 

 suicide of one or more members of the stock in successive generations to 

 occur. Associated with these temperamental evidences of degeneracy of 

 a stock may be chronic alcoholism, dipsomania, hysteria, hypochondriasis, 

 exophthalmic goitre, neurasthenia, psychasthenia, migraine, petit mal, or 

 neuroses of an epileptic character, often unrecognised because not mani- 

 festing fits of the major form of the disease. In searching for the neuro- 

 pathic tendency there are, therefore, many possibilities of missing the 

 inborn factor of a neurosis or psychosis though a careful inquiry be made, 

 even when aided by intelligent co-operation on the part of the friends. 



Some Illustrative Pedigrees Showing Various Manifestations and Results 

 of the Neuropathic Taint. 



Fig- 3- A. B., an alien Jew, aged 54, was admitted to an asylum for 

 the first time suffering with involutional melancholia ; he has a sister who 

 has not been in an asylum, but, as events turned out, bore the latent seeds 

 of insanity. The man is married to a nealthy woman who bore him a large 

 family ; the first five are quite healthy, then comes a congenital imbecile 



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