women, while the mother was both delicate and small. This family lived in the country, was very wealthy, and always accustomed to the various means generally found successful either in destroying the predisposition or lessening its influence, yet in no one instance in this family were they successful, though the open form of the disease was retarded perhaps in all. The females died the earliest.[168] The blood vessel system is affected as regards development in such families. The heart is often diminutive; the right ventricle is exaggerated. Two great types of degenerate constitutions are produced in children of the tuberculous. One of these may well come under De Giovanni's category of the torpid. The victim is usually coarse-featured and coarse-skinned, with peculiarly unstable mentality; slowness of comprehension is combined with power of continuity of thought; at times mental apathy alternates with quickness of perception. Decided exaggeration of the lymphatic system (connected with utilising of material elsewhere than at the point where it has been rendered unfit) with deficient function occurs, resulting in fitting a soil for germs. In other respects the torpid resembles the second type, the erethistic (nervously fussy type) of De Giovanni. This is generally characterised by the presence of a clear complexion, a fine skin, and features well cut and often beautiful. The lips are red and the teeth pearly white, though liable to early decay, and the eyes are large and full, the pupil being widely dilated and the white of the eye beautifully clear. The eyelashes are long, curved and silky, and the blue veins show distinctly through the clear thin skin. The bones are light, the hands and feet well formed, the stature often tall, and the whole figure slightly and gracefully built. The erethists generally remain spare, and have a strong dislike to fatty food. They are vivacious and excitable, and the intellectual faculties are often highly developed. At an early age they show marvellous activity. The regularity with which such precocious tubercular children die has given rise to proverbs anent exceptionally clever children that they are "too wise to live long." Wanting in stamina, they are incapable of prolonged exertion either of mind or body, and break down under conditions which would not prove injurious to the healthy. They are continually taking "cold," and are prone throughout life to affections of an inflammatory character. Multiple and frequent pregnancies occur. The children, deficient in vitality, are carried off in numbers during infancy by convulsions, brain fever, water on the brain, exhaustion, diarrhoea, teething, and other ailments, or they succumb at the second detention or at puberty. A small proportion reach maturity. Few live beyond thirty-five or forty years of age. However brilliant intellectually, they are equally emotional, impressionable, and impulsive. There is a marked absence of mental stability.