CAUSES AND PREVENTION OF INSANITY. 109 



ally. In such cases the ultimate outcome is almost absolutely cer- 

 tain, and is noted chiefly by a definite class of tensions and reactions 

 of both mind and body which invariably impress themselves upon 

 progeny, and which for the most part are made obvious in this par- 

 ticular way. No matter how unphysiological such marriages may be, 

 however, they do not necessarily or very often result in the evolution 

 of insanity in the parties contracting them, but rather they do lay 

 the foundation of degenerative tendencies which almost invariably 

 predetermine the development of this affection in more or less remote 

 succeeding generations. Nor do the children of such marriages neces- 

 sarily or generally become insane, although they sometimes do; 

 but, impressed as these are by the degenerative malnutritions and ten- 

 sions and reactions of their parents, they tend to exhibit arrests and 

 eccentricities of development, which in turn become intensified in 

 the next, and again, in turn, in all the generations following, until 

 the instability becomes so marked that explosion occurs. In pass- 

 ing, it may be said that the most frequent source of the initiatory 

 tensions and reactions resulting from unphysiological marriage is 

 undoubtedly found in abnormal cohabitation, and the unrest and un- 

 satisfaction and exhaustion resulting therefrom. Such a condition 

 of things begets in perfectly normal people an irritating, nagging, 

 exhausting, persistent erethism, which in time involves the whole 

 organism and deflects it from its norm. Two people enmeshed 

 in such a bond always go to excesses and irregularities, either in ab- 

 stinence or indulgence ; or, if not this, then the whole matter becomes 

 aversional, with straining antipathy, perverting practices, and idea- 

 tional distrusts and loathings more and more predominating. No 

 wonder that such people predetermine succeeding generations to ab- 

 normal sensitiveness, irregular growth, and erratic manifestations in 

 both mental and physical spheres." (See New York Medical Journal 

 for August 14, 1897; also Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases, 

 vol. xvii, page 669.) 



Now, the outcome of such marriages seems to be a vitiated stream 

 of tendency, which carries with it in its progress from generation to 

 generation certain elements which predetermine to still fuller vitia- 

 tion, even with incurable insanity, as noted above. Thus, people 

 endowed with such natural characteristics, being altogether too 

 prone to gravitate toward each other, eventually marry, and thus 

 emphasize in progeny the vitiation already doubly initiated. Na- 

 tures's course demands that such people marry, if at all, into the 

 healthiest, most corrective stock possible. But here immediately 

 there arises not only a scientific prohibition, but an ethical question 

 which should be heeded: Should such people really marry even the 

 best of stock, with the probability of thus vitiating a stream which 



