FERNELIUS is of opinion that old people beget weak and diseased children, “_Senes et Valetudinarii imbecilles filios vitiosa constitutione gignunt_.” PORTAL supports the same opinion, and thinks that the older people are when they have children, the more likely they are to have acquired imbecillity or disease, and to transmit the same to their children, from whom they may become hereditary, (_Portal_, “_Sur la nature et traitement de quelques maladies hereditaires ou de famille_”). This is altogether a popular error; what innumerable instances, says Dr. Adams, might be cited, in which the younger branch of a family has revived its splendour, which had been decaying for a succession of ages: the late Mr. Pitt was the youngest son, born when his illustrious father was in the fifty-first year of his age. OF DIVORCE OR NULLITY. If either of the parties professing to contract marriage be at the time defective in the points enumerated in the preceding section, it is a good ground of divorce; but to establish such defect, and especially the defect of corporeal ability, the strongest evidence must be adduced,[256] not merely on the general maxim that the best possible evidence which the case will allow must always be produced, but also as the particular fact to be proved is or may be contrary to the general order of nature, and therefore requires more than ordinary proof for its establishment: to such points therefore the medical practitioner is required to give his most sedulous attention, first to the question in the abstract, contrasting his own experience with the opinions and traditions which he may find upon the subject, and divesting his mind of all speculative and theoretical doctrines which he does not find supported by well authenticated facts; thus prepared his second object will be an attentive, accurate, and scientific examination of the immediate case in question. The defect may be mental[257] or corporeal; thus it may proceed from antipathy to a particular woman, when it has been called _impotentiam_ or _maleficium erga hanc_; this was the alleged case of the Earl of Essex, in the time of _James_ the 1st; for which see 1 _Harg. St. Tri._ 315: 2 _How. St. Tri._ 786.; and for the very curious argument and narative of _Abbot_, Archbishop of Canterbury, see 10 _Harg. St. Tri. Appendix_, p. 4. How far this case may be depended on, except as a beacon to show us what we ought to avoid, may be exceedingly doubtful. The character of the Lady Essex, afterward infamous as Countess of Somerset for the murder of Sir _Thomas Overbury_, may lead us to suspect every species of imposition and falsehood. The Judges, according to the testimony of their coadjutor the Archbishop, had predetermined to decide in favor of the divorce; no sufficient evidence appears to have been required or received, and the king, making himself at once the advocate and partisan of his unworthy