HEREDITARY TRAITS. 233 



There are some curious stories of special vices trans- 

 mitted from parent to child, which, if true, are exceedingly 

 significant, to say the least. 1 Gama Machado relates that a 

 lady with whom he was acquainted, who possessed a large 

 fortune, had a passion for gambling and passed whole nights 

 at play. ' She died young,' he proceeds, ' of a pulmonary 

 complaint. Her eldest son who was in appearance the 

 image of his mother, had the same passion for play. He 

 died of consumption like his mother, and at the same age ; 

 his daughter who resembled him, inherited the same tastes, 

 and died young.' Hereditary predisposition to theft, murder, 

 and suicide, has been demonstrated in several cases. But 

 the world at large is naturally indisposed to recognise con- 

 genital tendency to crime as largely diminishing responsi- 

 bility for offences or attempted offences of this kind. So far 

 as the general interests of the community are concerned, the 

 demonstrated fact that a thief or murderer has inherited his 

 unpleasant tendency should be a raison de plus for prevent- 

 ing the tendency from being transmitted any farther. In 

 stamping out the hereditary ruffian or rascal by life imprison- 

 ment, we not only get rid of the ' grown serpent ' but of the 

 worm which 



Hath nature that in time would venom breed. 



1 The following statement from the researches of Brown -Sequard 

 seems well worth noting in this connection: 'In the course of his 

 masterly experimental investigations into the functions of the nervous 

 system he discovered that, after a particular lesion of the spinal cord of 

 guinea-pigs, a slight pinching of the skin of the face would throw the 

 animal into a kind of epileptic convulsion. That this artificial epilepsy 

 should be constantly producible in guinea-pigs, and not in any other 

 animals experimented on, was in itself sufficiently singular ; and it was 

 not less surprising that the tendency to it persisted after the lesion 

 of the spinal cord seemed to have been, entirely recovered from. But 

 it was far more wonderful that the offspring of these epileptic guinea- 

 pigs showed the same predisposition, without having been themselves 

 subjected to any lesion whatever ; whilst no such tendency showed 

 itself in any of the large number of young bred by the same accurate 

 observer from parents that had not thus been operated on.' 



