Madness and Marriage.

Waikato Times, Volume XXIII, Issue 1905, 20 September 1884, Page 6

Madness and Marriage.

The Medico-Legal Journal number for December which has just reached us contains I much interesting and suggestive matter in relation to the insane. The following passage is worth careful consideration: — " Marriage of the Insane. — Dr. C. H. Hughes, of St, Louis, says : that marriage of all insane persons at certain ages should be interdicted by law, and the victims also of such diseases as entail insanity or epilepsia, should also be forbidden to enter into matrimony before the sterile time. In behalf of the rights of the insane, who -would wish to have a maimed offspring, if under the dominion of. the right reason, it should be lawful for proper persona to forbid suoh disastrous banns, and the duty of the State to prevent them ? It is a terrible thing for the State to taoitly consent to suoh deterioration of the race as is caused by such marriages; and duty to humanity, sane and insane, demands repressive legislation. No "pestilence that walked in darkness, or destruction that has wasted at noon- day," ever called more Ipudly for State intervention against their spread, than the distinctive heritage of the neuropathic diathesis " (which we may call nerve-taint, for convenience) 11 calls for the concern of the State. Its evil influences are all about us, even more disastrous than any plague or pestilence, afflicting the humblest citizen as well as the highest, and their posterity." A writer in Hygiene Pratique states that boots and shoeß may ba rendered waterproof by soaking them for some hours in thick soap water.' The compound forms 1 a fatty aoid within the leather and makes it impervious to water,-