128 Heredity. 



and nervous contagion certainly contributed to produce this 

 phenomenon, but there is no doubt that it is to be in a great 

 measure referred to heredity. 



Another mental affection, known as melancholia and lypemania, 

 by some authors identified with hypochondria, but by others held 

 to be a distinct complaint, though it much resembles it in its 

 psychological effects, while differing in its organic causes, is also 

 hereditary. 'Lypemania,' says Esquirol, 'is most commonly 

 hereditary; lypemaniacs are born with a particular temperament, 

 the melancholic, and this predisposes them to lypemania.' 



Cases are on record of families, all of whose members are 

 tormented with the fixed idea that people want to murder them 

 or poison them. A woman affected with lypemania was sent, at 

 the age of forty-two, to an asylum, and there died. It was dis- 

 covered that her grandfather and her mother had been insane; 

 and her son, barely fifteen years of age, already gave signs of 

 lypemania. 1 In 482 cases of this disorder, Esquirol found no to 

 be hereditary. 



With this form of morbid heredity we may couple the heredity 

 of presentiments. The following curious case is taken from 

 Brierre de Boismont. If we accept the anecdote as true, we 

 must, says Dr. Delasiauve, recognize the principal cause of the 

 phenomena in the heredity of a nervous affection. 



' Marshal de Soubise related, in presence of Louis XIV., that as 

 he was one day conversing in his cabinet with an English lady, he 

 all at once heard the lady utter a shriek, and saw her rise to go 

 away and fall unconscious at his feet ; this without any external 

 cause. Filled with surprise and concern, the Duke de Soubise 

 rang the bell. The servants ran in and attended on the fainting 

 lady, who soon came to herself. " Do not detain me," she said to 

 the Marshal, excitedly ; " I shall scarcely have time to put my 

 affairs in order before I die." 



' She then told M. de Soubise that both sides of her family had 

 the gift of divination : every member of it had been able to name 

 the very hour of their deaths a month beforehand. She added 



1 Gazette des Hdpitaux, 19 October, 1844. See also Moreau, 192 ; 

 Maudsley, 376. 



