the disease itself; whilst the hysteria of parents or ancestors 

 usually predisposes to hysteria in the children thus 

 denoting an inheritance of like tendencies, and especially in 

 transmission from mother to daughter. Various other ner- 

 vous affections, which have appeared in the ancestors, favour 

 a disposition to hysteria in the descendants ; just as it 

 happens, on the other hand, that hysteria appears in one 

 generation, and epilepsy, chorea, insanity in the next. 

 Briquet has proved that more than a fourth of the female 

 descendants of the hysterical suffer in their turn from 

 hysteria ; and Amann has recently stated that in 208 cases 

 of hysteria he proved with certainty an hereditary tendency 

 165 times that is in seventy-six per cent. All those pheno- 

 mena which indicate the possession of a neuropathic predis- 

 position have a decided influence upon the transmission of 

 a tendency to hysteria : moreover, privation, insufficient 

 nourishment, debility in the parents arising from senility; 

 or chronic diseases, as phthisis, apparently favour the 

 development of a tendency to hysteria in the children. The 

 inherited tendency to hysteria may for a long time remain 

 latent, until, in fact, some constitutional shock or epoch 

 developes an outbreak of the disease. In other cases the 

 transmitted predisposition may be strong and effective 

 enough to develop it independently. It should, however, be 

 remembered that in a few cases hysteria may result in a 

 child from the mere fact of its imitating an hysterical parent. 

 That weakly constitutions manifest a greater predisposition, 

 must be conceded, just as acquired conditions of debility 

 favour the development of the disease. Herein is probably 

 to be found the connecting link in those cases in which 

 debility of the parent induces hysteria in the descendants. 1 , 

 1 Jolly. Ziemssen, vol. xiv. 



