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etc. ; the mania of progenitors may be changed in the 

 descendants into aptitude for the arts, liveliness of imagina- 

 tion, quickness of mind, inconstancy in design, sudden and 

 variable will." "Just as real insanity," says Moreau, of 

 Tours, " may be hereditarily reproduced only under the form 

 of eccentricity may be transmitted from progenitors to 

 descendants only in modified form, and in more or less 

 mitigated character so a state of simple eccentricity in the 

 parents, a state which is no more than a peculiarity or a 

 strangeness of character, may in the children be the origin 

 of true insanity. Thus in these transformations of heredity 

 we sometimes have the germ attaining its maximum intensity ; 

 and, again, a maximum of activity may revert to the mini- 

 mum." It should also be remembered that as in certain 

 families, so also in certain individuals, two or more morbid 

 predispositions may be found to co-exist ; thus it is not 

 unusual to find such diseases as acute mania, epilepsy, and 

 phthisis in children of one family, and the frequent appear- 

 ance of cancer, as well as scrofula in families predisposed to 

 insanity has also been observed ; in fact, Sir William Gull, 

 in his address at the meeting of the British Medical Asso- 

 ciation, at Oxford, said that scrofulous children were not 

 uncommonly the offspring of parents who had had cancer. 

 So also in individuals it is no unfrequent occurrence to see 

 phthisis followed by acute mania, religious mania succeeded 

 by phthisis, scrofula followed by suicidal melancholia, psoriasis 

 succeeded by acute mania gout followed by insanity gout 

 succeeded by carbuncle, etc. That there is a strong here- 

 ditary element in all these cases cannot be denied, so that as 

 has been observed, it behoves us to look out for indications 

 of the existence in the same person of two or more morbid 

 conditions or dispositions, such as may be derived from both 

 parents or from several ancestors. 



