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was arrested by isolating the chorea patients. The intensity 

 of the symptoms varied greatly ; some of the attacks lasted 

 for months. In connection with such contagious or imitative 

 cases, the especial point to remember is that a distinct pre- 

 disposition seems to be necessary to propagate the disease by 

 imitation : otherwise the number of instances would be 

 much greater than it is. 1 



In this connection I may now briefly refer to alcoholism ; 

 the pernicious effects of alcoholic excesses on the nervous 

 system being well known, and these are, according to all 

 competent observers, markedly hereditary in many cases. 

 In cases of inherited predisposition to chronic habitual 

 drinking, it is not absolutely necessary that the parents or 

 ancestors should have been drunkards, but that the family 

 is characterised by that form of unstable nervous organisa- 

 tion which I have already alluded to as a neuropathic pre- 

 disposition, and that the neurotic taint which manifests 

 itself in other members in such affections as hysteria, 

 epilepsy, and insanity, will be manifested in these cases by an 

 intense, if not insuperable, craving for alcohol. At the 

 same time it should be borne in mind that owing to the 

 tendency which acquired predispositions have to reproduce 

 themselves in the offspring, drunken parents may actually 

 transmit this predisposition to their children, or if not, then 

 such a state of disordered cerebral nutrition as may express 

 itself in epilepsy, insanity, idiocy, hysteria, weakened will- 

 power, or mental instability. Here again we see how 

 the differentiation of individuals is maintained by patho- 

 logical processes ; for, given a drunken parent or parents, 

 their children will assuredly inherit such a neuropathic dis- 

 position, as in the case of one of them may manifest itself 

 1 Von Ziemssen. 



