=The Case of the Epileptic.=--The number of epileptics in whom the disease may be traced to hereditary causes is estimated to be about 33 per cent. of the whole. This is indeed a very large percentage. It does not, however, follow that in all the cases or in by any means a large proportion of them, the parents were also epileptics. Authorities are not agreed as to the influence of heredity as a predisposing cause; but it is recognised by all that the children of insane, neurotic, hysterical or neuralgic parents are liable to become epileptics. Also that alcoholism in the parents conveys a predisposition to the child. The hereditary cases are therefore to be divided amongst all these causes. In what proportion it would be difficult to estimate; but very few persons in whom epilepsy has developed marry, and as 75 per cent. of the cases are said to begin under the age of 20 years, and very few after 25 years (cases of hereditary epilepsy have been known to develop at so late an age as 65 and 70 years) it limits the number of epileptics who marry to a very narrow margin. For even these few, marriage should, however, be entirely out of the question. In cases, where from syphilis or shock epilepsy is developed in the married adult we should expect to find treatment imposing a restriction upon the freedom of the patient somewhat similar to that provided for lunatics. In almost every rank of society the developed epileptic would be excluded from marriage by the law of sexual selection, and as the great majority develop epilepsy before coming to a marriageable age, few epileptic children can claim a developed epileptic ancestry. The number of cases, where epilepsy results from an epileptic ancestry, is estimated by Sir Wm. Gowers at 22 per cent. of the whole. These cases are to be distributed between the developed form and the petit mal. As the petit mal often escapes observation Dr Chapple's method would only apply to those cases of the marriage of persons who were afflicted with the major form of epilepsy, which means that perhaps not more than 10 per cent. of the number of epileptics could be prevented from coming to birth. If a ten per centum reduction is to be considered as solving the problem in the case of epileptics what will the 86 per cent. of reforms among criminals be valued at?