THE PHENOMENA OF HEREDITY. 59 



neva, lias found, in the ancestry of 243 epileptics, seven epileptics, 21 

 insane, and 27 individuals who had suffered from cerebro-spinal affec- 

 tions. GeoTget, from numerous observations made at the Salpetriere, 

 came to the conclusion that hysterical women have always near rela- 

 tions who are hysterical, epileptical, hypochondriac, or insane. Moreau 

 calls attention to the "prodigious quantity" of morbid nervous con- 

 ditions to be found in the ancestry of idiots and imbeciles. A single 

 fact will give the means of judging of the varied and odd complica- 

 tions occurring in the hereditary transmission of neuroses. Dr. Morel 

 attended four brothers belonging to one family. The grandfather of 

 these children had died insane, their father had never been able to 

 continue long at any thing, their uncle, a man of great intellect, and a 

 distinguished physician, was noted for his eccentricities. Now, these 

 four children, sprung from one stock, presented very different forms 

 of physical disorder. One of them was a maniac, whose wild par- 

 oxysms recurred periodically ; the disorder of the second was melan- 

 choly madness ; he was reduced by his stupor to a merely automatic 

 condition. The third was characterized by an extreme irascibility 

 and suicidal disposition. The fourth manifested a strong liking for 

 art, but he was of a timorous and suspecting nature. 



Scrofula, cancer, tubercular consumption, syphilis, gout, arthritis, 

 tetter, and, in general, all those chronic constitutional affections which 

 are called diatheses or cachexias, are very often transmitted from 

 parent to child. The heredity of these morbid states is almost as fre- 

 quent and as well defined as that of the neuroses. We may also affirm 

 the heredity of skin-diseases, and especially of psoriasis, although in 

 this case heredity is of rarer occurrence. 



The evolution of these hereditary maladies is extremely interesting 

 and dramatic. Planted in the children's system as germs, or as mere 

 predispositions, they are sometimes destroyed, beyond the possibility 

 of returning, by a multitude of favorable conditions and precautions : 

 in other instances, they begin at once their fatal work of destruction ; 

 or, again, they lie hidden for years, reappearing at length, remorseless 

 and terrible, under the influence of sundry exciting causes. Thus age, 

 sex, temperament, practices, habits, hygiene, surrounding conditions, 

 act a part in the development of hereditary morbid activities. Insanity 

 is rare in childhood, and epilepsy most commonly makes its appearance 

 in youth. Hysteria, scrofula, rachitism, and tubercle, appear in child- 

 hood and in youth, while gout, gravel, calculus, alopecia, and cancer, 

 are hereditary states of the adult. Women are more liable to insanity, 

 epilepsy, and hysteria, than men ; but men, on the other hand, are far 

 oftener than women attacked by gout, gravel, and calculus. The ner- 



day of marital cohabitation, and Amyot says that " drunkenness genders naught that is 

 sound." Recent accurate observations have shown that the child that is conceived in a 

 fit of alcoholic delirium, though the latter be only transitory, carries forever the inefface- 

 able marks of a more or less profound degeneracy. 



