them are among the most gifted and attractive people in their community, the majority are otherwise, and possess an uncommon capacity of making fools of themselves, being a nuisance to their friends and of little use to the world. Many of them get fairly well through life if their lives are tolerably easy or especially well regulated; if not, even they seldom escape further disturbance during the period of growing old. Their mortality-rate, especially from pulmonary consumption, is high. The prognosis is usually stated as unfavorable, largely, perhaps, because proper treatment is seldom pursued. If such children could be placed in the hands of judicious and experienced physicians from earliest years, much better results would undoubtedly be got and the downward tendency might be stopped. In the critical physiological periods of life, and under the influence of mental worry with physical strain, there is danger of breaking down. At the senile dissolution some of them lose much of their lifelong peculiarities, and as the mind fails in force and activity become more like other people. After the climacteric there may be also great improvement. TREATMENT should consist in the general principles of mental hygiene, especially in training the mind to self-control and to avoid introspection—in a word, in maintaining health and in having healthy occupation. The earlier in life it begins, the better. It is well for such persons, unless of uncommon gifts in some direction, as many are, to obtain quiet, routine positions in life, and to avoid its wearing responsibilities as much as possible. The question of marriage is a difficult one for the physician if he is called upon for advice. Of course the risk often can be estimated only {142} approximately, even after knowing both parties, who will heed medical counsel implicitly if it happens to coincide with their own notions. The further propagation of the neuro-psychopathic constitution in the world involves much entirely uncompensated misery, as well as genius, enthusiasm, and originality, the compensation for which is estimated by society in one way as regards Burns, Byron, De Quincey, Carlyle, Goldsmith, John Howard, and Frederick the Great's father, and in another when considering the inmates of jails and almshouses and the destroyers of home peace. Maudsley thinks that one such poet as Shelley justifies the risks of marriage in the insane diathesis, and Savage considers the neuro-psychopathic constitution a useful element in society; while Clouston holds that the world would be better off to lose the few ill-balanced geniuses, the hundreds of impracticable, unwise talented men and women, and the thousands of people who cannot get on, shiftless, given to drink, idle, improvident, and unpractical, to get rid of the insane diathesis, especially if we shall find a middle course and learn to apply the laws of heredity so as to save the best and eliminate the unsound. It is to this class probably that