[15] Although the injurious effects of overpressure in education have been principally referred to in the education of girls, the same pernicious results may accrue in the case of boys. Dr. Wynn Westcott, in his work on "Suicide," states that during the last few years there have been several English cases of children killing themselves because unable to perform school tasks. He also says that child-suicide is increasing in England and in almost all Continental states, and that the cause in many cases is due to overpressure in education. Dr. Strahan, writing upon the same subject, in his treatise on "Suicide and Insanity," corroborates Dr. Westcott's views, and remarks that fifty years ago, child-suicide was comparatively rare; but that during the last quarter of a century it has steadily increased in all European states, and that the high-pressure system of education is generally considered as the cause of it. If any apology be needed for dwelling at such length on the evils of the educational overpressure so prevalent in our days, I would observe that it has an indirect bearing upon the causation of idiocy; for although the sinister results recorded by Drs. Westcott and Strahan may be comparatively rare, still, consequences of a more remote character may ensue, for the injury done to the nervous system is cumulative and transmissible from generation to generation, and a neurotic tendency may be engendered in the offspring of those who have been exposed to this evil, which may manifest itself in the appearance of idiocy or some lesser form of mental defect. [16] One of the most distinguished French psychologists, has thus expressed himself on this point--"Dans des réunions ou l'idiotisme étendait son triste niveau, il m'est arrivé plusieurs fois de rencontrer des crânes, qui dans leur partie frontale eussent fait honneur aux hommes les plus justement célèbres, et où l'on eût pu trouver avec avantage les organes de toutes les sortes d'esprit, de celui même qui apprend à rire des mystifications et des sots."--_Rejet de l'Organologie Phrénologique_, par F. Lelut, p. 196. [17] Dr. Wilmath, of the Pennsylvania Institution for Feeble-minded, reports that in six brains the island of Reil was exposed through defective development of the 3rd frontal convolution; in four cases, on both sides; in two cases, on one side only.--_Notes on the Pathology of Idiocy._ [18] Il Cervello in Relazione con i Fenomeni Psichici. Studio sulla morfologia degli emisferi cerebrali dell'uomo, Torino, 1895. P. 89.