HEREDITY. 



Morbid 

 Heredity. 



Statistics on 



Criminal 



Heredity. 



per cent, painters and musicians 89 per cent. In 

 the average family the chances are about one 

 hundredth part of one per cent, or one in ten 

 thousand." 



Nowhere is the fact of heredity and the influ- 

 ence of maternal impressions more fully demon- 

 strated than in the transmission of hereditary 

 or acquired morbid conditions. A genius for 

 vice or crime is as inheritable as a taste for music, 

 mechanism or art. Abnormal instincts run 

 through families. The reader is doubtless famil- 

 iar with the history of the notorious outlaws, the 

 James boys, the Younger brothers, and the Dai- 

 tons, all of whom were related. From Max 

 Jukes, a great drunkard, there descended in 75 

 years 200 thieves and murderers, 285 invalids 

 attacked by blindness, idfocy or consumption, 90 

 prostitutes and 300 children who died prema- 

 turely. The various members of this family cost 

 the state of New York more than a million dol- 

 lars. Of 233 prisoners at Auburn, New York, 

 23 per cent were of insane or epileptic stock. Vir- 

 gilio found that 195 out of 266 criminals were 

 affected by hereditary diseases, while Marro found 

 morbid inheritance in 77 per cent. Sichard ex- 

 amined almost 4,000 German criminals, in the 

 prison of which he is director, and found an in- 

 sane, epileptic, suicidal or alcoholic hereditary 

 taint in 36.8 per .cent. Prussian statistics for 

 1877 show that among 10,676 lunatics morbid 

 heredity may be traced in 6,369. Penta found 

 that among 184 criminals only 4 to 5 per cent 

 were quite healthy. Charles Marcier, M. B., says 

 that "20 per cent of the patients admitted to the 



