Heredity and Environment 103 



These abnormal cases will tend to become less and less 

 under wiser methods of living, a healthier environment, 

 and a higher ethical evolution of the race as a whole. 



Insanity has always been held to be a hereditary 

 disease, but we know that very few families have not 

 had some relative who has been peculiar, or has required 

 restraint under medical surveillance. From personal 

 experience in cases where it has appeared to be here- 

 ditary, I am of opinion that it is mostly evidenced in 

 regard to women, and has been due to the daughters 

 being reared by a mother with insane characteristics, 

 which has created an atmosphere strongly predispos- 

 ing to nervous breakdown on the part of the children. 

 They live in constant dread of sudden ebullitions of 

 the mother's mental excitation, and the nervous strain 

 is severe. 



You may ask, what of the epileptic ? Epilepsy can 

 be inherited, but its original cause is undoubtedly 

 preventable. Insanitary conditions, bad air, and 

 especially alcohol, produce a diseased condition of 

 brain which so affects the individual generally that it 

 would be absurd to expect that he could generate a 

 normal or average member of the race. And I have no 

 doubt that epilepsy will disappear when better methods 

 prevail. 



I hold, therefore, that we are justified in coming to 

 the conclusion that the palmy days of the theory of 

 heredity are over : a child inherits very little more 

 from its parents than the characteristics of the genus 

 homo : in other words, any healthy, normal, or average 

 child can, by means of a sufficiently early environment, 

 be so moulded as to be efficient : in one case, as an 

 emperor, in another as a scavenger, as a saint, or a devil. 



The subject was very thoroughly gone into at the 

 annual meeting of the British Medical Association at 

 Oxford some years ago, and the majority of the mem- 



