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to observe how strong the suicidal bent is apt to be in those 

 who have inherited it, and how seemingly trivial a cause will 

 stir it into action. Persons afflicted by it will sometimes 

 put an end to themselves on the occasion of a petty 

 contrariety, or when they are a little out of sorts, and with 

 almost as little concern as if they were only taking a short 

 journey. Public feeling is much shocked, as if something 

 very unnatural had happened, when a child of eight or nine 

 years of age commits suicide, and is prone to rush to the 

 hasty conclusion that so fearful an act would never have 

 been done by so young a child unless it had been subjected 

 to very cruel treatment. The real truth commonly is that 

 the act is done for a cause that seems utterly inadequate , 

 perhaps because his master inflicted a slight punishment, 

 or because his father scolded him, or because his mother 

 refused to let him go to a school-treat But if the child's 

 family history be inquired into, it will usually be found that 

 a line of suicide, or of melancholic depression with suicidal 

 tendency, runs through it. So it comes to pass that a slight 

 cause of vexation is sufficient to strike and make vibrate the 

 fundamental life-sick note of its nature." Many examples 

 might readily be given in support of these facts, and many 

 more in connection with the heredity of hallucination, 

 monomania, mania, dementia, and idiocy, but I can now 

 only refer the reader to the works of Brierre de Boismont, 

 Esquirol, Moreau, Maudsley, Tre'lat, and other writers on 

 the subject, in which will be found innumerable instances of 

 the heredity of every known form of insanity. 



I must now consider, as briefly as possible, those very 

 interesting phenomena denominated metamorphoses or trans- 

 formations in transmission, which occur not only between 

 generation and generation, but frequently also in the same 



