FAMILY GENIUS

Evening Star, Issue 20022, 13 November 1928, Page 13

FAMILY GENIUS

IK ELDEST m YOUNGEST CHILDREN Eldest and youngest children in the family constellation tend to be both blessed ami cursed. This was stated (according to (he ‘Daily Telegraph’) to the psychology section of tho British Association at Glasgow during September by Dr R. D. Gillespie, of Loudon, in a lecture on tho relation of the size of tho family to psycho-neurosis, which ho described as a condition not ot insanity, but of extreme nervousness and hysteria. The eldest and youngest children appeared to be fraught with special possibilities. People of genius tended to come from ono or the other. In the case of the, eldest children the ratio of chances of genius was three to one compared with intermediate members of tho family, and in the case of the youngest children two (o one. But in compensation eldest and youngest children tended more to become idiots and criminals, particularly the latter.

Disease in children tended (o affect the first-born more frequently than subsequent members of the family. The incidence in the first-born in general children’s diseases was 42 per cent. Dr Gillespie alluded to “only childishness,” which he said had been described as the curse of the country. It had been suggested that only children were peculiarly liable to become neurotic, but observation at big hospitals showed that, (hough I hey might be nervous as young omidreti, tney did not lend to grow np into uirtieu'arly nervous adults.

Them wore indications tint persons ' j. 0 hal fallen ill of psycho-nemesis (ended to marry less and have Cower children than tho average of their fellows. Arctlcr observed fact was that neurotics who did marry seemed to be pre-emincnGy boyproducing in the ratio of 100 to uo