A "Happy" Family

Feilding Star, Volume V, Issue 34, 22 March 1884, Page 3

A "Happy" Family

Ihe mischief resulting from marriages entered into without, due regard to physicial physiological condition*are only too frequency the matter for observation to family physicians. Intermarriages among hereditary inebriates • are perhaps among the most copious and melancholy examples. An observed case recorded by the editor of the Qnart<*rlv Journal of Inebriety affords a striki-g example of this: — "The ancestors of AB were Iri-h. and inebriates. Owing to a rise in real estate the son became wealthy. He was talented, and a paroxysmal inebriate at 1.6 years of aye. He mirried a pious woman having neurotic ancestors, in wpite of the protest of tbe family physician Seveu children follow d this marriage; two died in infancy, of convulsion ; the third became insane at puberty, and is now in an insane asylum, hopelessly incurable ; the fourth grew to manhood, and is now in au insane asylum, hopelessly incurable ; the fourth grew to manhood, and is now an i ebriate pauper and criminal having been in prison five out of th •• last eight years; the fifth became the wife of a wealthy man, and in a paroxysm of inebriar.e insanity, killed her child, poisoned her husband, an>i then committed suicide The sixth w;is a low dealer in --pi its and n petty criminal, wli. has repeatedly b- en puni-.h«'d f"»r cr ms!. 'he sevei.th, after a s'sort life. <<f gr<-at excesses, died in a public hospital. Th.: tat her became a paralyti*, 1-st bis propestv, and died in an asy urn. The mother •lied in pu.-xp-ral onvul-ious ut __. " — British Medical Journal.