INHERITANCE OF MENTAL DEFECTS AND DISEASE 67 



istics, it cannot, I think, be considered as a probable general 

 conclusion in the light of our present knowledge. For many of 

 the so-called stigmata of degeneracy there is little or no positive 

 evidence of transmission as particular characters apart from the 

 general complex. The apparent substitution of one anomaly for 

 another and the fact that certain forms of anomalies are apt to be 

 correlated with certain others, although not showing a constant 

 correlation, point to the conclusion that in most anomalies we are 

 dealing with symptoms of heritable defect instead of hereditary 

 characters per se. Fere who has brought together a number of 

 cases of this "malformation multiples" comments on "la coinci- 

 dence du bec-de-lievre avec I'infantilisme, avec la polydactylie et 

 le pied bot, ou avec la syndactylie et d'autres vices de conforma- 

 tion des extremites, de la polydactylie avec le coloboma de I'iris 

 et la retinite pigmentaire," and many other associations some of 

 which may rest upon mere coincidences. 



One is, of course, not justified in lumping all sorts of defects 

 together as the result of a single tendency to degeneration. There 

 are indications of types of degeneracy within which certain 

 stigmata are particularly prone to appear while other types of 

 degeneracy are apt to be manifested by other groups of symptoms. 

 The protean manifestation of certain types of defect makes the 

 analysis of the phenomena a matter of unusual difficulty, and one 

 which is often further complicated by association with the like- 

 wise protean manifestations of hereditary syphilis. The following 

 family history reported by Kiernan and described in Talbot's 

 Degeneracy will forcibly illustrate this point: "A farmer lived 

 twenty miles distant from his nearest neighbor, whose only child 

 he married. ... He then found lead on his farm and went to a 

 city . . . where he made money more as a curmirig tool than an 

 adventurer. He became a high liver, gouty and dyspeptic, and 

 died with symptoms of gouty kidney at 70. The couple had five 

 children. The eldest, a son, became a ' Napoleon of Finance,' . . . 

 He married a society woman, the last scion of an old family. The 

 second child, a daughter, was club-footed and early suffered from 

 gouty tophi. She married p society man of old family who had 



