... With regard to males, marriage would no doubt be highly
beneficial in many instances, _and if the risk of progeny is not run,
may well be encouraged_."
Esquirol, quoted by Bucknill and Tuke, p. 58, says:--"Of all diseases
Insanity is the most hereditary."
Bucknill and Tuke, p. 647, say:--
"Of marriage it may be said that the celibacy of the insane is the
prophylaxis of Insanity in the race, and although a well chosen mate and
a happy marriage may sometimes postpone or even prevent the development
of insanity in the individual, still no medical man, having regard to
the health of the community, or even of that of the family, can possibly
feel himself justified in recommending the marriage of any person of
either sex in whom the insane diathesis is well marked."
Again (pp. 647 and 648) "It is thus that the seeds of mental diseases
and of moral evils are sown broadcast through the land; and other new
defects and diseases are multiplied and varied with imbecilities, and
idiocies, and suicidal and other propensities and dispositions, leading
to all manner of vice and crime. The marriage of hereditary lunatics is
a veritable Pandora's box of physical and moral evil."
The least fit, then, are the most fertile, and the most fertile are
subject to the common law of heredity, and the defects are transmitted
to their offspring, often accentuated by the intermarriage which their
circumstances favour or even necessitate.
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