350 THE PRINCIPLES OF HEREDITY 



have offspring. The natural selection of the sane, therefore, 

 was very stringent. For some generations past, however, 

 lunatics have been treated with great humanity and skill. 

 Beyond all classes of the community they are now watched 

 over by the State. Men of sound mind, but suffering from 

 bodily illness, may perish in the slums for lack of proper 

 nourishment and care ; but the insane are removed to special 

 sanatoria, where, without expense to themselves, they receive 

 food and lodging and are placed under the care of trained 

 nurses and medical specialists, over whom in turn the Com- 

 missioners in Lunacy exercise a jealous supervision. As a 

 consequence the lunatic frequently recovers, and is restored 

 to his family, and the right to have as many children as 

 other people. 



543. " If, as I have always strongly held and enunciated, 

 hereditary predisposition is the chief factor in the causation 

 of insanity, if the reproduction of their species by physically 

 and mentally tainted, immature, and drunken parents is 

 allowed to go on unchecked, the outlook of our descendants 

 is indeed gloomy. Let me give a concrete instance, and 

 ex uno disce omnes. A man who has been an inmate here 

 more than once on the last occasion for some five or six 

 years unexpectedly began to improve, and at length was so 

 much better that his relatives wished to give him a trial at 

 home. I willingly assented, and he was in due course 

 discharged. Within a few months we heard that he was 

 engaged to be married, and he actually was married to it 

 will hardly be credited the daughter of a woman who has 

 been here for years, and is never likely to be anywhere 

 else. . . . Similar cases, which are far from being isolated or 

 rare, are constantly being forced under our observation." 1 " For 

 years I have been struggling to prevent idiots and lunatics 

 being sent from our county asylum to marry and breed 

 idiots just as if the thing were desirable. I gave it up in 

 hopeless despair about four years ago, owing to the following 

 case : A woman who is more than half idiotic came to live 

 with two sisters one a total, the other a partial idiot. She 

 married a very dull, partially idiotic man, and had almost 

 immediately to be taken to the asylum. There she gave 

 birth to a complete idiot, and was sent home a few weeks 

 afterwards, with the result that the same thing had been 

 repeated nine times." 2 



1 Annual Eeport (1902), F. H. Craddock, Medical Superintendent of 

 Gloucester County Lunatic Asylums. 



2 Extract from a Woman's Letter, quoted by Dr. B. R. Rentoul. 



