HEREDITY. 
By JOH1ST I\ GRAY, M. 13., LL. E>., 
Superintendent of the State Lunatic Asylum, Utica, N. Y. 
[From the American Journal of Insanity, for July, 1884.] HEREDITY.* 
BY JOHJM P. GRAY, M. D., LL. D., 
Superintendent of the State Lunatic Asylum, Utica, N. Y. 
Heredity is one of the indisputable facts in nature. 
It confronts us at the outset, in the study of natural 
science, medicine and jurisprudence, and bears upon the 
most important subjects connected with social life, 
whether viewed from a scientific or practical stand- 
point. 
In his “ First Principles ” Herbert Spencer states the 
general lawT of heredity as follows: “ Understood in its 
entirety the law is that each plant or animal produces 
others of like kind with itself.” Herbert Spencer’s 
dictum amounts really to saying that every organism 
tends to re-produce its kind, and this he limits by 
adding that the likeness consists “ not so much in a 
repetition of our individual traits as in the assumption 
of the same general structure.” 
Some writers (Mercier and Ribot), have tried to graft 
upon this simple proposition the statement as a law, 
that “every attribute of the parent tends to be 
inherited by the offspring. Inheritance is the rule; 
non-inheritance the exception.”! That is to say, all the 
* Address as President of the Association of Medical Superintendents of 
American Institutions for the Insane, delivered at the Thirty-eighth Annual 
Meeting, held at Philadelphia, Pa., May 13, 1884. 
f Meucier, Journal Mental Science, October, 1883, p. 337. 2 
characteristics and peculiarities, however trifling, tend 
to he inherited, and will be, unless prevented by some 
opposing influence. 
This is made to include what is called “ morbid 
heredity,” the characters of disease, as well as the 
structural and other physical traits. This morbid 
heredity is made to begin with the act of generation. 
‘‘As far as the father’s influence is concerned, any 
hereditary predisposition which may exist may be 
transmitted at the moment of conception ; when the 
ovum is impregnated it is subjected to the mother’s 
diseases or predisposition to disease.”"' 
The same writer quotes Lucas as to the question 
whether this principle of heredity applies to disordered 
as well as healthy mental characteristics. Lucas says, 
“There is no pathological state of being where the 
intervention of morbid heredity is more remarkable and 
more remarked.” He quotes also the declaration of 
Burrows; that while “ mania and melancholia do not 
propagate their respective types,”—“one type only of 
mental derangement can be said to propagate itself 
-—the propensity to suicide.” He refers also to Moreau 
and other authors to show that “ cerebral disorder may 
be transmitted by either parent.” 
We might add largely to this list and refer to the 
many cases that are cited to sustain this view. We 
have made these few quotations simply to show what 
is meant by the term morbid heredity. Cases are not 
only numerously given by authors, but the various 
facts collated as to variation and domestication of 
animals and plants are brought in to sustain this theory 
of morbid transmission as a principal factor in insanity; 
and even the chemistry of metals and gasses is applied 
* Bucknill and Tuke, p. G6. 3 
to the nervous system* to show the rationale of inbreed- 
ing, hybridism, and crossing of parentage. 
Now, so far from its being true that every attribute 
tends to be inherited, we had supposed that even on 
the theory of evolution itself, by what Mr. Darwin has 
to call “some unknown law in the constitution of the 
organism,” and for the protection of the species itself, 
there was ail inherited tendency just the other way; 
that is to eliminate all unfavorable attributes of progeni- 
tors, whether by disease or otherwise, and whether 
acquired by accidents of environment or otherwise. 
We believe this to be the true law in nature. Disease 
is a “tendency” to death, to extinction. The “tend- 
ency” in genera and species is directly antagonistic to 
this—that is to life and perpetuation. Were it other 
wise, were the law and “tendency” of nature to continue 
and intensify these destructive operations, its cumula- 
tive force would soon bring species to an end. The fact 
is, the whole force of an organism, as an organism, is 
set in array against any disintegrating influence, 
whether in the structure itself, or the environment. 
More facts can be gathered to show how unfavorable 
conditions in the structure, or morbid functions in the 
organism, have been neutralized or overcome in the 
offspring than can be adduced for any special morbid 
transmission. Indeed, what is often attributed to 
“morbid heredity” will be found to be due simply to 
parallelism or similarity in education and environment. 
Special characters are often due to unconscious imitation 
from infancy to manhood; a gradual process of educa- 
tion ; like causes are apt to produce like effects, without 
the necessity of being handed down through natural 
generation. Indeed, this is accepted as a rule. If 
puerperal conditions, or grief, or the worry of failure in 
*Mercier, Journal Mental Science, January, 1883. 4 
business or other nervous shock or excitement produces 
insanity, it is not because there is any inherent connec- 
tion between these things and insanity, but because 
they all may produce a certain effect upon the brain in 
its circulation and nutrition, interfering with its normal 
physiological operations; and if this effect is seen more 
speedily in some physical structures than others, while 
it is proper enough to say that the structures were 
inherited, it is not proper to say that they carried in 
them the disease which was the result of external influ- 
ences. 
An “ insane diathesis” is a pure verbal fiction. The 
frailest physical structure will not develop insanity 
without an external cause, and the causes, as observed 
under experience, are largely within the control of due 
precautions. It is not unusual that writers have 
allowed a mere theory to run away with them, and it 
would not be difficult to give examples of many ex- 
ploded theories in connection with psychology and 
insanity. Ilibot has whole chapters on heredity of im- 
agination in poets, in painters, in musicians, in men of 
science, philosophers and economists, authors and men 
of letters. 
Now, no one would like to lay down a law that the 
son of a genius shall never in any case be a genius him- 
self, but we are willing to leave it to the verdict of 
history whether hereditary genius in literature or art 
is not rather conspicuous by its absence. Of course, in 
support of any theory whatever, associated with life, a 
quantity of facts may always be forthcoming, but any 
catalogue of facts that can be made will always leave a 
majority of all the facts still to be integrated in a final 
system. 
The facts that relate merely to structural features, 
supernumerary members, variations of aspect, size, color, 5 
<fec., have nothing to do with the transmission of mor- 
bid processes, but are simply varieties of abnormal 
peculiarities. Might we not as well pretend that a 
bruised fruit or seed would perpetuate its bruises as 
that a human organism would transmit a wound or a 
disease ? Heredity has its proper place in natural sci- 
ence, and is but the expression of the primeval law of 
species; but we can not admit that it is responsible for 
such a thing as a positive disease of the brain, which 
all admit is the only basis of insanity, the mental dis- 
turbances being but symptoms of such disease. Morbid 
affections of the human organism developed by causes 
ab extra are to be distinguished from those normal 
forces of the organism that are inherent and operate ab 
intra. 
While recognizing the great importance of heredity 
and admitting that it deserves great consideration in 
its bearing upon the development of man and the deter- 
mination of his physical traits, I am equally satisfied 
that undue importance is attached to heredity in con- 
nection with the causation of insanity. The transmis- 
sion of a physical type, with more or less resemblance, 
we have said, is a law of nature, and this law tends 
to maintain and perpetuate races and families. This 
law is written on men and animals, on trees, flowers and 
vegetation, generally. It is a conserving, universal law 
in nature. The natural physical characteristics in fami- 
lies may in some members by intermarriage be intensi- 
fied but not to any great extent. The nose, the mouth, 
and the eyes, more frequently than any other part of 
the organism may have significant family or race type, 
and be very strongly marked in certain members. Oc- 
casionally a monstrosity of structure may appear in the 
hands or feet, and be perpetuated through two or three 
generations, in some members of the family; such as 6 
five oi* six fingers or supernumerary toes, but these mon- 
strosities are deviations in excess and are not perma- 
nently held as in the type. No six-fingered or seven- 
toed family has ever been established. Double-headed 
or four-armed, and three and four-legged people have 
been born, and some of them have lived to adult life. 
There are no instances of transmission. Cross-eyed, 
near-sighted vision, and such other physical deviations 
as have been mentioned, it must be borne in mind, are 
not instances of disease. These organs are healthy, just 
as crooked legs may be healthy, and they can not 
properly be used as illustrations of the heredity of dis- 
ease. Disease is not a law of our physical or mental 
being. No person has ever been born insane. No per- 
son ever became insane simply because his father or 
mother, or both, or his grand-parents were insane. No 
person ever became insane simply because of any im- 
pression arising from parentage upon either his physical 
or mental constitution. Every person who becomes 
insane, whether he has had insane parentage or not, 
becomes so by reason of some physical causes operating 
to change the physiological state of the brain. What- 
ever his parentage may have been, insanity in him can 
only be developed by the same causes which produce 
it in persons who have no insane parentage. Parentage 
can not impress upon offspring even a tendency, or a 
“ pre-disposition to insanity.” The most it can do is to 
transmit a physical structure or organization which will 
be more liable to the operation of ordinary causes that 
produce disease in any form in people generally, insan- 
ity included. Those who have insane persons among 
their ancestors in a direct line, can only become insane 
therefore, as other people do, by the operation of 
the same causes. There is no law in their members 
tending or dooming or predestinating them to 7 
insanity. If they are as strong in system as people who 
have no insane among their parentage, as they generally 
are, they have only to take the precaution and care that 
people generally need, and if they are not as strong, 
they must take more care against the exposures of 
life, as all delicate people ought to. This is all there 
is of this question—the sum and substance of the mat- 
ter. 
Diseases are accidental states produced from causes 
originating outside of natural bodies and natural states. 
Disease is not transmitted by birth, as disease, except 
through blood poisoning of the parent, as in leprosy, 
syphilis, and, perhaps, cancer. However, in syphilis it 
ends in the first generation. The deteriorated child of 
a syphilitic parent can not transmit syphilis. If the 
ehild of syphilitic parents is born healthy, syphilis 
can not be developed in any of its forms as the result 
of parentage alone. 
The sins of parents, it is said, may be visited on the 
children to the third and fourth generation, but this is 
in their temporal or external consequences. 
No man, however, is compelled or impelled by natu- 
ral or divine law to commit the sins of his fathers. No 
man is born a forger, a burglar, a thief, an assassin, a 
murderer, because his grandfather or father represented 
one or other of these classes of criminals. Such parent- 
age does not either impose a criminal life or a criminal 
tendency except through the processes of education, 
any more than a man is 'born fated to farming or black- 
smithing or shoemaking or any other calling by reason 
of any paternal occupation or bent of mind. Occupa- 
tions or crimes that are found to run in families are 
simply the result of education and training. They are 
not born or inbred. It would not require much obser- 
vation to show that the sons and daughters of such 8 
persons are not only not destined by birth to the pro- 
fession or pursuits of their fathers, but are often not 
inclined to them or competent for them. Good parents 
have children who grow np in vice and crime, and 
criminal parents have children who grow up to the 
most exemplary lives. If this were not so, religion and 
morality and laws and institutions having for their 
object the reformation and improvement of mankind, 
wrould be meaningless and futile. 
The phrase: “Blood will tell,” is true in a broad 
sense. But take the millions of European nationali- 
ties who have come to the United States within the 
past century, a large proportion of whom have through 
social and governmental conditions that prevail in their 
native land, been poverty stricken, uneducated, many of 
them debased physically from dietary causes, and 
degraded mentally. What of their generations? To 
be sure many of them have remained just where they 
wrere, in poverty and degradation, and their descendants 
with them, because they have continued in the same 
plane of life. But the vast majority of their descend- 
ants have risen above the generations behind them 
under the improved conditions which they have volun- 
tarily sought or have drifted into. It is true that while 
harmonizing with their new surroundings the descend- 
ants are changed in modes of thought, social ideas, etc., 
yet they retain the strong race characteristics, the 
physical and mental type. All this means normal, nat- 
ural, healthy transmission, influence for good or evil by 
circumstances and education. Race characteristics 
remain unchanged. Family types vary; this is the 
natural law. 
We might illustrate this point by the example of 
Australia. That was at first a penal colony. The con- 
servative law of heredity in operation for a few 9 
generations has not only not retained a society of crim- 
inals, but lias redeemed and elevated their progeny, 
eliminating the evil mental and physical conditions 
under favorable surroundings and education. The 
same is strikingly true of Pitcairn’s Island. 
Indeed, in our land, the Indians have retained their 
race attributes against all the resources of Christian 
civilization and the destructive agencies of govern- 
mental power. 
I am inclined to think that the doctrine of morbid 
heredity, so strongly held by some, was derived from a 
period when philosophy had more influence in forming 
opinions upon such matters than the science of physiol- 
ogy and practical medical observation. 
Perhaps few men are in perfect bodily health, that is, in 
a state in which every part of the organism is not only 
in a perfect condition itself, but in wdiich the whole is 
in harmonious, rhythmical action. Ordinarily effective 
health is maintained with quite a swing of the pendu- 
lum between physiological extremes, and this is varied 
greatly in different individuals. But this varying state 
is not disease; nor are people liable to disease in pro- 
portion to general delicacy of structure. 
A common method of showing “ heredity,” is to take 
some exceptional family, one in a thousand or ten 
thousand, where several members have been insane. 
The numerical method does not take into account the 
accidental or incidental circumstances which develop or 
intensify the causes capable of producing insanity in 
each member of the family, without reference to rela- 
tionship. Again, a family is taken where peculiarities 
are strongly marked and general family decay has set 
in. Such persons usually live differently from other 
people, and finally become eccentric and from depreci- 
ated health may become insane. To say that such per- 10 
sons become insane without the operation of the 
ordinary causes of disease, is unscientific, and these 
occasional families can not be taken as evidence of the 
existence of a law of transmission of disease. Such 
instances simply prove the accidental conditions already 
referred to. These cases really do not make any excep- 
tion to the law of disease as a factor of insanity. I 
recall an instance where the father became insane and 
three of seven children. All the children were born 
before the insanity of the father. There was no insan- 
ity on either side of the house. The cause of the 
insanity in each case was entirely adequate to its 
development without any reference to relationship or 
descent. 
Practically the whole question of heredity resolves 
itself into this: How far an attack of insanity may 
wreck the constitution of a parent, impair the functional 
energies and by reason thereof give the offspring an 
enfeebled physical structure, not a structure with a 
proclivity to insanity or to any other disease, but 
simply a structure more liable to give way under the 
common and ordinary exposures of life and the causes 
which set up morbid processes in the human system. 
In the same manner an attack of pneumonia, or typhoid 
fever, or a profound malarial attack may impair the 
constitution of the parent, and the offspring may be 
less vigorous, and the resisting power in the organism 
may be less active, and in all such cases they may be 
more liable to give way under exposures than if the 
parent had not suffered constitutional impairment from 
any of the diseases mentioned. 
This, however, is not an inherited proclivity or pre- 
disposition to insanity or any other disease, but the 
child begotten of parents of impaired constitution may 
(not will) have a feebler structure with less resisting 11 
power. If such a child is strong and healthy, it is in 
no more danger than if the parent had not had an 
attack of insanity or other disease. 
The parents can not impregnate the child with 
germinal or peculiar cell structure predisposing to 
insanity or any other disease. If this were so, and 
there was transmission of disease, under such a theory 
the child would receive from the parent a fatal and 
inevitable proclivity to insanity. In that case, as a 
logical necessity, the child, whether it developed 
insanity or not, must retain the fatal power of com- 
municating this proclivity to its offspring, and how is 
it to be obliterated? Indeed, all that would be neces- 
sary under such a theory to start a tainted family line 
would be for a parent to become insane. No matter 
what the conditions were that produced depreciation in 
health in the mother and finally developed insanity, 
she, having been insane, under such a theory would be 
endowed with the fatal power of communicating at 
conception the germ of an “ insane diathesis.” To be 
sure, writers put in certain guarding expressions as a 
caveat against such a logical issue. For example, Dr. 
Tuke says:* “virtuous and vicious tendencies would 
often appear to be hereditary; or, as congenital, are 
displayed from the earliest infancy in children subjected 
to the same educational influences.” “ The occurrence 
of insanity in a parent after the birth of the person 
affected can not be regarded as a certain proof of 
hereditary predisposition; at the same time such 
predisposition remains highly probable; its value may 
be judged of by the character of the attack under which 
the patient labored; whether, in short, it appears to 
have been accidental rather than exceptional.” Does 
not this beg the question ? 
*Bucknil] and Tuke, page 250. 12 
The dread of heredity lies in the popular belief that 
it is a law of our being; that somewhere and somehow, 
lodged in us are the seeds of this disease, and while this 
has been taught in literature it comes down to us 
chiefly as a sort of legendary tradition. There are 
families who, when a member has become insane from 
legitimate causes, live in dread throughout their lives, 
covering ten, twenty and thirty years, and every illness 
and every condition of nervous depression wakes up a 
dread of insanity. 
There is no reason why insanity should be especially 
selected, except for the mystery that has pertained to 
its history and treatment. There are other diseases of 
the brain, as apoplexies, paralyses, meningitis, <fcc., any 
of which may affect or impair the intellect. Natural 
death is where the physical machinery wears out; the 
morbid processes which we call disease may destroy 
the body and anticipate natural death. But these 
conditions are not self-developed, nor are they slumber- 
ing elements in the body. They come from external 
causes connected with life and its activities; the habits, 
the exposures, the vices, the accidents, the over-toil, the 
starvation, the excesses, the exhaustions—these and 
kindred causes induce physiological disturbances and 
set up the morbid processes which we call disease, and 
insanity is merely one of them, and, as we have said, 
one that is largely preventable. 
Suicide is set down as among the tendencies inherited 
and, according to one writer already quoted, it “pro- 
pagates itself.’1 It would seem impossible to conceive 
of the impregnation of an ovum with a predisposition 
to self-destruction. Suicide arises, not from impulse, or 
fatal inbred proclivity, but from illogical reasoning 
regarding the value of life, or a false personal estimate 
of its good and evil, by those who are brought face to 13 
face with trouble. The suicidal thought comes to 
many when their experience reaches a point which 
leads them to ask, “is life worth living?” to others 
when they are brought to the verge of exposures in 
which their characters would suffer from their criminal 
conduct, to others when unjust accusations and slander 
come upon them and they stop to ask themselves the 
question if they can stand up against them; to others 
from mortification, disappointment and disaster, where 
their pride and self-love are deeply wounded. Again, 
it comes to others when owing to failure of health, 
they have delusional ideas of coming or present disaster 
to property, to family or reputation, or where under 
delusional ideas of their spiritual condition, they seek 
death as a relief from what they believe they can not 
endure; or because of the delusive idea that self- 
destruction is a command of their Maker to save them- 
selves or to save others. Again, suicide is in a large 
number of cases simply imitation and morbid desire of 
notoriety, as in the instances of throwing one’s self from 
dizzy heights of bridges, or towers, or precipices, or in 
other like ways; or it comes from the fatal notion that 
because some relative has committed suicide they are 
doomed to the same thing, and this is one of the evils, 
and one of the greatest evils, aided, if not countenanced, 
by this theory of inheritance. 
Some years ago a person came from a distant part of 
the State in company with his wife to consult me in 
regard to his mental condition, he being in dread of 
suicide. He stated that his grandfather, uncle, father, 
one brother, older than he, had committed suicide at a 
certain period of life. He had reached that period and 
was in constant dread of the same fate overtaking him. 
He was an intelligent man; I explained the matter 
fully to him, pointed out the fallacy of such views, and 14 
though lie was satisfied he remained until the time had 
passed, then appreciated the subject and went home. 
I saw him several years afterwards in excellent healthy 
and he said he had instructed his younger brothers and 
felt safe in regard to his children. 
Careful examination of some thousands of suicidal 
cases reveals no instances beyond the classes I have 
cited. While writing I have a letter from a young 
man who some time ago attempted suicide. He gives 
this reason: “ Unfortunately I became diseased. 1 
applied to a physician and under treatment I was 
finally pronounced cured. Speaking with another 
physician upon the subject, he suggested that to be 
certain of cure I had better continue treatment, and he 
gave me a bottle of meuicine. Revolving the matter 
over'I thought ‘perhaps I am permanently diseased; 
there seems to be no security.’ After suffering a few 
days under this idea, I took the whole poisonous con- 
tents of the bottle, and came near destroying myself, 
simply to avoid the consequences of a revelation of my 
conduct.” 
Suicide is repugnant to nature and is in direct 
violation of the inherent law of self-preservation. It is 
condemned by both divine and human law. To 
dignify and excuse such an act by the plea of heredity 
is to play tricks with the common sense of mankind. 
The question of inherited mental and moral traits is 
quite another field, and evidently outside of the range 
of disease. It is complicated and interwoven with the 
environment of the child from its birth ; its domestic 
surroundings and the example of its parents from 
infancy, both through their own lives and the lives of 
their associates; in a word, the educational influences 
in the widest sense of the term. To this field belongs 
the so-called heredity of crime and intemperance. 15 
These vices and criminal lives are simply the outgrowth 
of education, example, appetites and passions, and do 
not proceed from any inherited tendency. 
Intemperance is set down as hereditary. Intemper- 
ance is not disease, however potent it may be in pro- 
ducing disease. Intemperance is simply vice. Few 
men of experience in the world but can recall families 
of drunkards. So we may recall families of smokers; 
it would be as logical to apply to this habit the doc- 
trine of heredity in the form of an inherited tendency 
as it would be to the liquor habit. 
In the plea of insanity for criminal acts, heredity, has, 
perhaps, figured more conspicuously than any other 
element or agency in defense of crime. It has been 
held up as a sort of underlying mal-influence, inherent 
in the very constitution, liable at any moment to break 
out; a general larvated state of body and mind, the 
“ latent diathesis ” liable to develop at any time; and 
this has too often been made to serve as a reason for 
the possible existence of insanity in any particular case. 
Heredity is strongly urged in what are called cases of 
moral insanity. According to its advocates a sort of 
moral scrofula pervades the emotional nature, dominat- 
ing the sentiments and perverting or obliterating the 
moral sense. It is even claimed that the individual, 
under these circumstances is unconscious of this state 
of things; that his intellectual nature is not involved, 
but he does not recognize the “ nature and quality of his 
acts,” and of course “ can not know that they are wrong.” 
This plea has been urged in all kinds of cases and for a 
great variety of criminal acts, such as book stealing by 
ministers, pilfering by school girls and boys, shoplifting 
by women of respectability, or in cases of reputable 
persons shooting under jealousy and revenge persons 
who have despoiled their domestic life, or against whom 16 
they have grudges, real or imaginary. Incendiarism, 
burglary, and even forgery have come under this cate- 
gory. In many of these cases the parents have not only 
not been insane but have led exemplary lives, and 
heredity can not be predicated. 
Prof. Arndt* shows where the logic of such views 
may lead: “ Morals and a sound psychical life,” he 
says, “ are inseparable. All immorality is a symptom 
of psychical disease,” and declares “no person of sound 
mind ever commits a crime.” Again—“ each criminal 
is a diseased human being.” 
Even Dr. Clouston, in his able and interesting “Clin- 
ical Lectures on Mental Disease,” recently published, 
seems (I am sorry to say,) to embrace all those artificial 
classifications of the various forms of what he would 
call “Monomania” and “Moral Insanity.” In his 
description of the origin of monomania he thus states 
the first out of four different ways in which he claims 
it arises. “ It is a gradual evolution out of a natural 
disposition, a proud man becoming insanely and 
delusionally proud, a naturally suspicious man 
passing the sane borderland with his suspicions. 
There is usually a hereditary predisposition to 
insanity in those patients. The disposition may, 
in fact, be regarded, as the nervous diathesis out 
of which the mental disease springs.” (Page 201.) 
It seems to be impossible to put scientific and intel- 
ligibly consistent meaning into such language as this. 
What is a gradual evolution out of a natural disposition 
in any physiological sense ? How does a proud man 
become “insanely and delusionally proud” without the 
physical changes that imply the disease of the brain? 
For this is what he seems to insinuate when he says. 
“ The (natural) disposition may in fact be regarded as 
*Lehrbuck der Psycbiatrie, 1883. 17 
the nervous diathesis out of which the mental [disease 
springs.” He clings to the term “ mental disease ” with 
a tenacity worthy of the old days when insanity was 
regarded as an actual disease of mind. But if pride 
and suspicion and other unamiable traits are a “ nerv- 
ous diathesis,” evoluting into insanity, who is safe, and 
how are we to account for so large a proportion of cases 
in which the insanity first exhibits these traits preceded 
by no such “nervous diathesis?” How can a “disease” 
in any scientific sense spring out of a natural disposi- 
tion, under the name of a “nervous diathesis?” 
This “insane diathesis,” or “insane temperament,” as 
he elsewhere calls it, for illustrations of which he refers 
us to the “ works of the modern psychological novelist,” 
he differentiates from the German Primare Verrilch- 
theit, (or imbecility.) by saying that “ the latter is an 
insanity naturally evolved in early life from the original 
constitution of a brain which may have been at first 
without peculiarity, but gradually, and inevitably and 
without any other cause than its own natural evolution, 
an unsound [state of mind is developed without the 
preliminary explosion of brain storm in the shape of an 
attack of mania or melancholia.” (Page 259.) Perhaps, 
however, the latter is not more fanciful than the former. 
It has not even been proved as yet that idiocy is any 
such evolution from hereditary “diathesis;” and what 
the words “gradually, inevitably and without any 
other cause than its own natural evolution,” can really 
signify, other than a metaphysical speculation of the 
author, it would be difficult even to conjecture. The 
German writers on this subject exhibit a wonderful 
cleverness and ingenuity in word manipulation; but 
one of their number, conspicuous for cleverness and 
ability, Professor Arndt,* gives us a clue out of the 
* Lehrbuch der Psychiatrie. Rud. Arndt 1883. 18 
labyrinth of Primare Verrucktheit when he says: “If 
a state of psychical debility is unmistakably manifest 
already during the evolution of life, or as com- 
monly expressed, is congenital, it is called “ congenital 
dementia” or “idiotism.” Here then, we are brought 
face to face with an entirely different department, that 
of congenital defects, malformations or arrested physi- 
cal development which are not classed in the category 
of active disease, and which, at least, have nothing to do 
with the positive access of the disease called insanity. 
A congenital defect, structural or otherwise, does not 
necessarily connote a morbid process. Hence the hos- 
pital practice of our day does not attempt to include the 
idiots and the insane under one system of care and 
treatment; that of idiocy being chiefly directed to such 
development of its subjects as is attainable by education 
and training—a school system with physical training. 
Insanity is always an acute or supervening disease, 
however speedily its character may become fixed, and it 
always has for its origin a definite point of departure. 
Natural defects may enter into medico-legal questions 
of personal responsibility, but it is not because they 
have any medical or pathological connection with the 
active or acquired disease of insanity. 
In many such cases medical men have volunteered to 
appear before courts, and in other cases have been 
dragged in, to make medical science sustain such doc- 
trines and modes of defense. Writers have endeavored 
to draw distinctive lines between ordinary wickedness 
and this “moral criminal state” by calling stealing 
“kleptomania,” incendiarism “pyromania,” murder 
“homicidal mania,” drunkenness “dipsomania,” etc., etc. 
In all such cases the insanity of a relative is a most 
precious boon, as affording an avenue of escape, for 
heredity gives them the “constitutional basis for the 19 
perverted moral state.” The history of cases in which 
such pleas have been entered and pressed would show 
that they have not been resorted to to shield only the 
weak-minded, the “half-witted,” the natural born 
incompetents and unfortunates who really stand on the 
border line of imbecility, and approximate idiocy in 
their sense of responsibility. But history shows that 
it is the voluntarily bad, who happen to have means 
and friends to defend them, for whom this plea is raised; 
indeed the very infamy of their lives is paraded as evi- 
dence of insanity. It is an attempted stigma on the 
medical profession to boast “ that doctors can always be 
found to expert such cases for a fee.” It is perhaps 
true that in some cases doctors have gone on the stand 
for a fee, but in most cases they go on the stand really 
believing in such views of insanity, and supposing that 
it is possible to have the moral half of a man insane 
and the intellectual half sound; and so have given the 
most absurd testimony in good faith. 
Still, it is equally true that lawyers are to be found 
for a fee to defeat justice and turn criminals loose on 
society. The answer of course is that it is the business 
of lawyers to work for a fee and make the worse appear 
the better reason. All that can be said on this subject 
is that lawyers and doctors are men, and men have 
their own “ moral tone.” From the standpoint of good 
morals, it is doubtful whether the lawyer who uses a 
false plea for a fee, is any better than the doctor who 
sustains it for a fee. If life is simply a game of cards, 
as has been said, cheating is only reprehensible when 
found out. On this subject an able attorney once said 
in my hearing, in a court room, “ Science has no morals; 
it consists of facts and laws.” “ Yes,” replied the judge, 
“ but he who prostitutes Science is himself a criminal.” 20 
Heredity, I said at the outset, is an indisputable fact 
in nature. It is implied in the very words, “genera” 
“and species,” according to which every organism is 
originated “ after its kind.” Nothing I have said ques- 
tions or militates against the fact of the transmission 
of race types and characteristics of family, or tribal, or 
national traits. The hopes and destinies of modern civ- 
ilization itself are in a measure wrapped up in the noble 
potentialities which a beneficent Creator has imbedded 
in the constitution of human nature, which it is the pro- 
bation of mankind to develop, through successive gener- 
ations. What I wish to combat is the notion of the 
direct transmissibility of disease, as such ; the monstrous 
figment of scientific pessimism, that the abnormalities 
and lesions of the human organism can acquire any such 
persistent and stable character as its own vivida vis 
itself, that nature puts a destructive force on an even 
race with the constructive in any of her operations; an 
idea which ought to be contrary to any philosophic 
system of evolution itself. It is a law of all organisms 
to reject whatever is foreign to its own normal condi- 
tion. If all that is claimed for “ morbid heredity ” be 
true, it would be a cumulative process which must 
eventually swamp the vital energies of the world. It 
seems philosophically absurd to assume that a force, 
opposed to organic life, can so seat itself in the consti- 
tution of an organism as to perpetuate itself by that 
organism’s generating power. Nature rejects or elimi- 
nates the taint of death. No sooner do the decaying 
elements enter the earth than they are transformed into 
life-giving agents and “ that which is corruptible puts 
on incorruption.” 
The earth itself, is not more surely the purifier of all 
corruption, than the stream of human vitality which 
shows its recuperative tendency to cast out and 21 
eliminate the elements that are hostile to its own exist- 
ence and welfare. It is a benevolent principle im- 
pressed upon the natural world, which, like its own 
indefinable beauty, appeals only to a being of god-like 
reason and imagination, and inspires the wistful hope 
of the poet— 
“ That somehow good 
Will be the final goal of ill, 
To pangs of nature, sins of will, 
Defects of doubt, and taints of blood.” 
Tennyson—In Mem. THE 
AMERICAN JOURNAL OF INSANITY. 
The American Journal of Insanity is published quarterly, at the 
State Lunatic Asylum, Utica, N. Y. The first number of each volume 
is issued in July. 
Editor, 
JOHN P. GRAY, M. D., LL. D., Medical Superintendent. 
Associate Editors, 
EDWARD N. BRUSH, M. D., 
G. ALDER BLUMER, M. D., 
CHARLES W. PILGRIM, M. D., 
OGDEN BACKUS, M. D., 
Assistant Physicians. 
THEODORE DEECKE, Special Pathologist. 
TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION, 
Five Dollars per Annum, in Advance. 
Exchanges Books for Review, and Business Communications 
may be sent to the Editor, directed as follows: “Journal of 
Insanity, State Lunatic Asylum, Utica, N. Y.” 
The Journal now enters upon its forty-first volume. It was estab- 
lished by the late Dr. Brigham, the first Superintendent of the 
New York State Lunatic Asylum, and after his death edited by Dr. T. 
Romeyn Beck, author of “Beck’s Medical Jurisprudence;” and since 
1854, by Dr. John P. Gray, and the Medical Staff of the Asylum. It is 
the oldest journal devoted especially to Insanity, its Treatment, Juris- 
prudence, &c., and is particularly valuable to the medical and legal 
professions, and to all interested in the subject of Insanity and Psy- 
chological Science. . ,