A TERRIBLE RECORD.

North Otago Times, Volume XXXI, Issue 6137, 25 August 1886, Page 4

A TERRIBLE RECORD.

Marriages entered into without due regard to physiological conditions are only too frequently matters for observation to family pbyaioiftDS. Intermarriages among hereditary inebriates are, perhaps, among tbe most copious and melancholy examples. An observed case recoided by the editor of tbe Quarterly Jcnnial of Inebriety affords a striking example of thin : ' ' The ancestors of A.B. were Irish, and inebriates. Owing to a rise in real egiate the son became wealthy. He was talented, and a paroxysmal inebriate at twenty six years of age. Be married a piouß woman, having neurotic ancestors, in spite of the protest of the family pbynicinn. Seven children followed this marriage ; two died in infancy of convulsions ; the third became insane at puberty, and is now in an insane asylum, hopelessly incurable ; the fourth grew to manhood, and is now an inebriate pauper, snd criminal, and has been in prison five out of iqe last eight years; the fifth became the wife of a wealthy man, and, in a paroxyism of inebriate insanity, killed her child," poisoned ber husband, and then committed suicide. The sixth is a low deal denier in spirits and a petty criminal, who bas repeatedly been punished lor crime. The seventh, after a short life of great excesses, died in a public hospital. The faiher became a paralytic, lo*t his property, and died in an asylum. The mother died in puerperal convulsions a 1 thirty -four. — British Medical Journal.