INSANITY IN ROYAL FAMILIES. 181 
of the reigning houses in hereditary monarchies. This is 
specially true in regard to the diseases of the mind pre- 
viously mentioned. It is in reigning families that mental 
disorders are hereditary in an unusual degree. Thus Esquirol, 
distinguished for his knowledge of mental diseases, proved 
that the number of insane individuals in the reigning houses 
was, in proportion to the number among the ordinary popu- 
lation, as 60 to 1; that is, that disorders of the brain occur 
60 times more frequently in the privileged families of the 
ruling houses than among ordinary people. If equally 
accurate statistics were made of the hereditary nobility, 
the result would probably be that here also we should find 
an incomparably larger contingent of mental diseases than 
among the common, ignoble portion of mankind. This 
phenomenon ean scarcely astonish us if we consider what 
injury these privileged castes inflict upon themselves by 
their unnatural, one-sided education, and by their artificial 
separation from the rest of mankind. By this means many 
dark sides of human nature are specially developed and, as 
it were, artificially bred, and, according to the laws of trans- 
mission by inheritance, are propagated through series of 
generations with ever-increasing force and dominance. 
It is sufficiently obvious from the history of nations how 
in successive generations of many dynasties, for example, 
of the princes of Saxon Thuringia and of the Medici, the 
noble solicitude for the most perfect human accomplish- 
ments in science and art were retained and transmitted 
from father to son; and how, on the other hand, in many 
other dynasties, for centuries a special partiality for the 
profession of war, for the oppression of human freedom, and 
for other rude acts of violence, have been hereditary. In like 
