118 The American Naturalist. [February, 
INSANITY IN ROYAL FAMILIES. A STUDY IN 
HEREDITY. 
By Auice BopineTon. 
In the Section of Psychology at the annual meeting of the 
British Medical Association, 1894, a most interesting and sug- 
gestive paper was read by Dr. W. Lloyd Andriezen, on the 
steady increase of the whole group of neuroses. In this paper 
the following sentence occurs; “ Nature stamps out the in- 
sanities herself; they end in sterile idiocy. But before such 
a consumation can be reached, a vast and interesting progeny 
has to be gone through, exhibiting all the intermediate phases 
of the insanities and the criminalities.” Dr. Andriezen speaks 
of the conclusions to be drawn from the history of the notor- 
ious “ Jukes family ” in America, and promises to enlarge on 
this subject in a forthcoming paper. 
Now, it is doubtless almost impossible to overestimate the 
importance of the study of the Jukes family as an example of 
inherited degeneration and vice amongst the dregs of society. 
But, as I read Dr. Andriezen’s paper, a subject for a study of 
hereditary insanity at the opposite pole of the social system, 
suggested itself to me; namely its effects in the royal families 
of Modern Europe. For many hundred years the problem of 
hereditary insanity has been worked out in some of these fam- 
ilies, and under circumstances which enable a student to fol- 
low out all its intricacies, since the connection of members of 
royal houses can, for obvious reasons, be more readily traced 
than those of private individuals. 
The subject has interested me ever since I saw, many years. 
ago, the great grandchild of a king suffering from the most 
violent form of mania I ever beheld. In this case the hered- 
itary taint had passed through two generations without devel- 
opment, whilst the ancestor, in whom insanity can first be 
traced, was a contemporary of Henry the Eighth! Moreover 
the insanity of this ancestor partook of exactly the same char- 
