92 HEREDITY IN RELATION TO EUGENICS 



garbage and despite his tender years he indulges in vile lan- 

 guage, exposes his person to Uttle gu'ls, masturbates and is 

 sexually misused by men. All attempts at reformation have 

 failed, — orphan asylum, home for boys, life on a farm; from 

 all these he runs away and returns to the life he loves. 



The foregoing cases are samples of scores that have been 

 collected and serve as fair representations of the kind of 

 blood that goes to the making of thousands of criminals in 

 this country. It is just as sensible to imprison a person for 

 feeble-mindedness or insanity as it is to imprison criminals 

 belonging to such strains. The question whether a given 

 person is a case for the penitentiary or the hospital is not 

 primarily a legal question but one for a physician with the 

 aid of a student of heredity and family histories. 



24. Other Nervous Diseases 



a. The General Problem. — The marvellous complex of 

 neurones (nerve cells and fibres), sustentative tissue, and 

 blood vessels that constitute the central nervous system 

 forms, perhaps, the most wonderful mechanism in nature. 

 Little wonder that it should vary greatly in different indi- 

 viduals, or that it should become easily deranged. Such 

 variations in structure and such derangement though 

 ordinarily hidden from view can be inferred from the be- 

 havior of the person. For the general principle holds that 

 every psychosis (or peculiar mental manifestation) has its 

 neurosis (or aberrent nervous basis). Peculiar or abnormal 

 behavior, then, is an index of peculiar or abnormal brain 

 condition. 



That heredity plays a part in nervous disease is indicated 

 by the famiUar fact of high incidence of some or otheT 

 psychic disturbance in the members of a single family. 

 We have already seen how incomplete mental development 

 is a consequence of the absence of a definite inheritable 



