HEREDITY AND EUGENICS IN RELATION 

 TO INSANITY. 



DR. F. W. MOTT, F.R.S., 



Pathologist to the London County Asylums. 



Physician to Charing Cross Hospital. 



Allow me to thank the Eugenics Society for doing me the honour of 

 asking me to fill the place of so distinguished a physician as Sir Wm. Osier, 

 the Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford. The subject of Heredity and 

 Eugenics in relation to Insanity is one which I, as Pathologist to the 

 London County Asylums, have been studying in a practical manner for 

 many years, and the more deeply I consider the question the more I find 

 there is to be done before we shall be safe in drawing ultimate conclusions 

 regarding certain practical questions dealing with the prevention of insanity. 



The subject of Heredity in its broad aspect is one of national importance 

 and interest, as it affects many social and legislative questions. The interest 

 taken by the general public in the question of heredity is a sign of social 

 progress. People are beginning to recognise the truth of Professor Arthur. 

 Thomson's dictum: '^The present is the child of the past ; _our_ start in 

 life is no haphazard affair, but is vigorously determined by our parentage 

 and ancestry ; all kinds of inborn characteristics may be transmitted from 

 generation to generation." 



All the modern doctrines of Human Heredity were foreshadowed by the 

 ancient philosopher Lucretius, who, in de serum nature?, says: "Some- 

 times, too, the children may spring up like the grandfathers, and often re- 

 semble the forms of their grandfather's fathers, because the parents often 

 keep concealed in their bodies many first beginnings mixed in many ways, 

 which, first proceeding from the original stock, one father hands down to 

 the next father, and then proceeding from them Venus produces 

 forms after a manifold chance, and repeats not only the features but the 

 voice and hair of forefathers, and the female sex equally springs from the 

 father's and males go forth equally from the mother's body, since these 

 distinctions no more proceed from the fixed seed of one or other parent, 

 than our face and bodies and limbs. Again we perceive that the mind is 

 begotten along with the body and grows up together with it, and grows old 

 along with it." 



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