F. W. Mott.Medicine and Eugenics.4 £3
a similar inborn temperament, dies in an asylum or commits suicide in
despair. I have often found in the collecting of pedigrees the association of
insanity and suicide in a stock preceded by, or associated with, the exist
ence of individuals possessing the melancholic, suspicious, brooding, self-
centred, hypochondriacal temperament; and it is not uncommon for
suicide of one or more members of the stock in successive generations to
occur. Associated with these temperamental evidences of degeneracy of
a stock may be chronic alcoholism, dipsomania, hysteria, hypochondriasis,
exophthalmic goitre, neurasthenia, psychasthenia, migraine, fetit mal, or
neuroses of an epileptic character, often unrecognised because not mani
festing fits of the major form of the disease. In searching for the neuro
pathic tendency there are, therefore, many possibilities of missing the
inborn factor of a neurosis or psychosis though a careful inquiry be made,
even when aided by intelligent co-operation on the part of the friends.
Some Illustrative Pedigrees Showing Various Manifestations and Results
of the Neurofathic Taint.
Fig. 3.—A. B., an alien Jew, aged 54, was admitted to an asylum for
the first time suffering with involutional melancholia; he has a sister who
has not been in an asylum, but, as events turned out, bore the latent seeds
of insanity. The man is married to a healthy women who bore him a large
family; the first five are quite healthy, then comes a congenital imbecile
4 Dim* «Skims,
he.Fig- 3
epileptic (cong.), then two healthy children followed by a daughter who
becomes insane at 23, then a son insane at 22, and lastly two children
who are up to the present free from any taint. The sister of A. B . is
married and has a family of ten, seven girls and three boys; one of the
females was admitted to the asylum at the age of 19, and since this pedigree
was constructed a brother of hers has been admitted, aged 24. Half-black
circles are insane.
The pedigree is instructive; it shows direct and collateral heredity; it
also shows remarkably well the signal tendency to the occurrence of insanity
at an early age in the children of an insane and potentially insane parent.
Fig. 4.—A very comprehensive and interesting pedigree obtained for me
by Dr. Wilson White, showing the result of marriage of a nearly sound
