9 



66666^ 



Fig. 14 



Importance of Ancestral Inheritance. ^ 



Everybody knows the value of coming from a good stock or a bad stock t 

 and in judging whether an individual who is insane should marry and pro- 

 pagate or not it is absolutely necessary as the study of a large number of 

 pedigrees shows that we should consider (i) the nature of the insanity, and 

 (2) what was the cause. Certain forms of insanity are much more likely 

 to be transmitted than others either in the same form or still more fre- 

 quently in some other form indicative of the neuropathic taint. The card 

 system of relatives which I shall refer to in detail, investigated for me by 

 Dr. Edgar Schuster showed that /epilepsy, recurrent insanity, and delu- 

 sional insanity are especially liable to be transmitted in the same form, but 

 general paralysis, which is now recognised as an organic brain disease due 

 to syphilis, -is not due to heredity, knd the cases consequently do not figure 

 largely in these relative cases. 



In considering the question of marriage and - propagation a study of 

 these relatives and pedigrees convinces me of the importance of looking 

 back into the stocks and ascertaining whether there are many lines of 

 defective heredity, and whether with some lines of defective heredity there 

 are lines of sterling worth, for often enough with insanity and epilepsy we 

 find great talent, even genius and members of civic worth. The very fact 

 that a person would come and consult the physician as to whether he should 

 marry or not is a sign of civic worth and high moral character, and in giving 

 advice we should be guided by a consideration of the stock into which he 

 or she proposes to marry. <4jf there is a neuropathic tendency in that stock, 

 marriage into it should be discountenanced, for I shall show you that the 

 chances of insane offspring arising are much greater, y Let me illustrate my 

 remarks by two pedigrees, one is that of a man of genius and remarkable 

 mental stability with a bad collateral heredity (Fig. 6), the other is that in 

 which pauperism, tuberculosis, and blindness in successive generations occur. 



