e his wife. Of course this applies also to the
wife of a weak minded husband.

=Insanity=

Insanity may be briefly defined as a disease of the mind. We will not
here go into a discussion as to what constitutes real insanity, as to
what is understood by insanity in the legal sense of the term, and so
on, except to note that we have two divisions.

One is functional insanity. This may be temporary, or periodical, and
is due to some external cause, is curable, and is not hereditary. For
instance, a person may get insane from a severe shock, from trouble,
from anxiety, from a severe accident (such as a shipwreck), from a
sudden and total loss of his fortune, of his wife and children (by
fire, earthquake, shipwreck or railroad accident). Such insanities are
curable and are not transmissible. Another example is what is known as
puerperal insanity. Some women during childbirth, due probably to some
toxic infection, become insane. This insanity may be extreme and
maniacal in character. Still, it often passes away in a few days
_without leaving any trace_ and may never return again, or, if it does
return, it may return only during another childbirth. This kind of
insanity is not transmissible.

The second division is what we call organic insanity. This expresses
itself in mania and melancholy, so-called manic-depressive insanity.
This is due to a degeneration of the brain-and nerve-tissue and is
hereditary.

But, our entire conception as to the hereditary transmissibility of
insanity has undergone a radical change. There is hardly another
disease the fear of whose hereditary character is responsible for so
much anguish and torture. In former years, when there was an insane
uncle or aunt or grandparent that fact weighed like a veritable
incubus on the entire family. Every member of the family was tortured
by the secret anguish that maybe he or she would be next to be
affected by this most horrible of all diseases--disease of the mind.
If an ancestral member of the family became insane at a certain age,
every member of that family was living in fear and trembling until
several years had passed _after_ that critical age, and only then
would they begin to breathe freely. Indeed, many people became insane
from the very fear of becoming insane. It cannot be subject to any
doubt that many people do become mentally unbalanced from the fear
that they will become unbalanced. Fear has a tremendous influence on
the purely bodily fu