Among recent writers, I note Tarnowski and Tchukinova, who to the Russian translation of my book (St. Petersburg, 1885) have added many new documents from the history of Russian literature; Maxime du Camp, who in his curious _Souvenirs Littéraires_ (1887), has shown how many modern French writers have concealed within them the sorrowful seed of insanity; Ramos Mejia, who, in his _Neurosis de los Hombres Celebres de la Historia Argentina_ (Buenos Ayres, 1885), shows how nearly all the great men of the South American Republics were inebriate, neurotic, or insane; A. Tebaldi, who, in his book _Ragione e Pazzia_ (Milan, 1884), brings fresh documents to the literature of insanity; and, finally, that acute thinker and brilliant writer, Pisani-Dossi, who has given us a curious study,[10] which is a monograph on madness in art; as in my _Tre Tribuni_ (1889) I have attempted to do with the insane and semi-insane in their relation to politics. CHAPTER II. GENIUS AND DEGENERATION. The signs of degeneration--Height--Rickets--Pallor--Emaciation--Physiognomy--Cranium and Brain--Stammering--Lefthandedness--Sterility--Unlikeness to Parents--Precocity--Delayed development--Misoneism--Vagabondage--Unconsciousness--Instinctiveness--Somnambulism--The Inspiration of Genius--Contrast--Intermittence--Double Personality--Stupidity--Hyperæsthesia--Paræsthesia--Amnesia--Originality--Fondness for special words. The paradox that confounds genius with neurosis, however cruel and sad it may seem, is found to be not devoid of solid foundation when examined from various points of view which have escaped even recent observers. A theory, which has for some years flourished in the psychiatric world, admits that a large proportion of mental and physical affections are the result of degeneration, of the action, that is, of heredity in the children of the inebriate, the syphilitic, the insane, the consumptive, &c.; or of accidental causes, such as lesions of the head or the action of mercury, which profoundly change the tissues, perpetuate neuroses or other diseases in the patient, and, which is worse, aggravate them in his descendants, until the march of degeneration, constantly growing more rapid and fatal, is only stopped by complete idiocy or sterility.