oly and unhealthy existence in the mother, are
causes. Fast living of parents in society is a fruitful cause of mental
imperfections in their children. "The sons of royalty and the sons of the
rich, are often weak in brain force because of the high living of their
ancestry."

The fast high livers of today are developing rapidly and surely, strong
tendencies to both mental and physical disorders. Elbert Hubbard says of
those who live at a certain hotel and waste their substance there, that
they are apt "to have gout at one end, general paresis at the other, and
Bright's disease in the middle."

Drunkenness, lust, rage, fear, mental anxiety or incompatibility, "if
admitted to participation in the act of impregnation will each, in turn or
in combination, often set the seal of their presence in the shape of
idiocy, imbecility, eccentricity, or absolute insanity."

Diogenes reproached a half-witted, cracked-brained unfortunate with this
remark, "Surely, young man, thy father begat thee when he was drunk."

[NERVOUS DISEASES 311]

Burton in his anatomy of melancholy states that: "If a drunken man begets
a child it will never likely have a good brain," Michelet predicts: "Woe
unto the children of darkness, the sons of drunkenness who were, nine
months before their birth, an outrage on their mothers."

Children of drunkards are often "sad and hideous burlesques upon normal
humanity." Business worry may cause unsoundness in the offspring generated
under such conditions.

One father had two sons grow up strong and vigorous, mentally and
physically, while a third son was weak, irresolute, fretful, suspicious
and half demented. The father confessed to his physician that on account
of business troubles he was half crazy and during this time the wife
became pregnant and this half-crazy son was born and the father states
that "he inherits just the state of mind I was then in." Many such cases
could be mentioned. "A sound body and a cheerful mind can only be produced
from healthy stock." Mental peculiarities are produced by unpleasant
influences brought to bear upon the pregnant mother. The story is told of
King James the Sixth of Scotland, that he was constitutionally timid and
showed great terror at a drawn sword. His father was murdered in his
mother's presence while she was pregnant. Children born under the
influence of fear may be troubled with apprehensions of impending
calamity, so intense that they may become insane at l