Sanity of mind : a study of its conditions, and of the means to its development and preservation / by David F. Lincoln.
- Lincoln, David F. (David Francis), 1841-1916
- Date:
- 1900
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Sanity of mind : a study of its conditions, and of the means to its development and preservation / by David F. Lincoln. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.
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![volutions as wonderful as those we call development. The child of unsound parentage may be beautiful and strong till his twentieth or his fortieth year, carrying all the while a perfectly concealed tend- ency; at a given time he has gout or insanity, or some other predestined affliction. It reminds one of a mine set to go off with a time-fuse. It will be seen from this that we are not to sup- pose that insanity or gout per se is inherited. What we inherit is rather a susceptibility or a tendency to these disorders—not the disorders themselves. We are given a body which, if things take their natural course, is likely to give rise to these troubles. Who shall tell us in advance ? The mine is there; can we not find the fuse and cut it ? Can we do nothing to arrest tendencies ? The question is of momentous importance, and is felt as such, with painful weight, by some of us. A partially affirmative answer will be given in some of the later chapters of this book, with a consideration of the methods of education and living appropriate to such prevention. One of our most prominent specialists in insanity,^ and, I venture to add, one of the fairest-minded, has expressed himself to me in conversation to the effect that the fatal necessity of insane entailment has been greatly exaggerated, and forms a great popular error. What is inherited is tendency. I know of persons [he said] of tuberculous inheritance, who have escaped by correct living though other mem- bers of the family have died of it. Tubercle is one of ' Dr. Hurd, Superintendent Johns Hopkins Hospital.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21064416_0037.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
