stage
in life in each successive generation (Mercier). In the first case the
family dies out, in the second case it recovers itself. In cases of
congenital defect, there is very little to fear. The lunatic is locked
up and the epileptic is avoided.

Nature deals most successfully with these cases. She saves where
possible and destroys when recovery is hopeless. Very slowly perhaps,
but very exactly--never making a mistake, and in her slowness she is but
giving man an opportunity to contribute something towards the recovery
she aims at.

=The Case of the Epileptic.=--The number of epileptics in whom the
disease may be traced to hereditary causes is estimated to be about 33
per cent. of the whole. This is indeed a very large percentage. It does
not, however, follow that in all the cases or in by any means a large
proportion of them, the parents were also epileptics. Authorities are
not agreed as to the influence of heredity as a predisposing cause; but
it is recognised by all that the children of insane, neurotic,
hysterical or neuralgic parents are liable to become epileptics. Also
that alcoholism in the parents conveys a predisposition to the child.
The hereditary cases are therefore to be divided amongst all these
causes. In what proportion it would be difficult to estimate; but very
few persons in whom epilepsy has developed marry, and as 75 per cent. of
the cases are said to begin under the age of 20 years, and very few
after 25 years (cases of hereditary epilepsy have been known to develop
at so late an age as 65 and 70 years) it limits the number of
epileptics who marry to a very narrow margin. For even these few,
marriage should, however, be entirely out of the question. In cases,
where from syphilis or shock epilepsy is developed in the married adult
we should expect to find treatment imposing a restriction upon the
freedom of the patient somewhat similar to that provided for lunatics.
In almost every rank of society the developed epileptic would be
excluded from marriage by the law of sexual selection, and as the great
majority develop epilepsy before coming to a marriageable age, few
epileptic children can claim a developed epileptic ancestry.

The number of cases, where epilepsy results from an epileptic ancestry,
is estimated by Sir Wm. Gowers at 22 per cent. of the whole. These cases
are to be distributed between the developed form and the petit mal. As
the petit mal often escapes observation Dr Chapple'