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. Féré who has brought together a number of 
cases of this ‘“‘malformation multiples” comments on “‘la coinci- 
dence du bec-de-liévre avec l'infantilisme, avec la polydactylie et 
le pied bot, ou avec la syndactylie et d’autres vices de conforma- 
tion des extrémités, de la polydactylie avec le coloboma de J’iris 
et la rétinite 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 cunning 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, ason, 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 a society man of old family who had 
