or instances in its defence, although in addition to those 

 already quoted, I may be permitted to mention the experience 

 of Echeverria, who, out of 306 patients under his own care, 

 had observed 80 with an hereditary tendency. With regard 

 to this hereditary tendency to epilepsy, we must be careful 

 not to limit it too much in its signification, as, for example, 

 in assuming that epilepsy only and strictly in the forbears is 

 calculated as strictly to reproduce epilepsy in the children. 

 This view cannot be upheld for a moment, as owing to those 

 phenomena of the law of variability which I have already 

 referred to, and which are denominated metamorphoses in 

 transmission (by which also the differentiation of individuals 

 is necessitated and secured) it by no means follows that the 

 ancestral or parental form of affection is strictly inherited by, 

 or transmitted to the children, but that whilst similar in 

 kind, it may be very different in degree. As Professor 

 Nothnagel, of Jena, says : " The children of those parents 

 may become epileptic who have been mentally diseased, but 

 who have never suffered from convulsive affections. The 

 fact is, hereditary disposition must be taken in a far broader 

 sense, and the proposition may be enunciated that any 

 neurosis in the parents, whether it be of a lighter or more 

 serious kind, may plant in the children the germ which 

 may develop into epilepsy. This obtains not only in regard 

 to hysteria, hypochondria, and catalepsy, but I have observed 

 cases where e.g., the mother suffered for many years from 

 pronounced migraine, .and with this exception there was 

 absolutely nothing else in the way of family tendency to be 

 found, and yet a daughter was hysterical, and a son epileptic. 

 From my experience, I am even inclined to ascribe to 

 neuralgia of many years' standing in the parents, a capacity 

 of producing epilepsy in the children. There are even not 



