Degeneracy: Its Causes, Signs and Results

by Eugene S. Talbot

The one-sided genius is a link between the neurotic, the epileptic, the paranoiac, the hysteric, and the imbecile. Cases crop up in which all these elements are so mingled as to create a puzzle where they shall be placed. In some cases, in accordance with the general law that physiologic atrophy is accompanied by hypertrophy in other directions, the intellectual powers other than along certain lines may be remarkably deficient. Moreover, the intellectual power due to healthy atavism is increased by the degeneracy in certain directions. Without going into the question, raised by Lombroso,[257] as to genius being an epileptoid neurosis, sufficient evidence exists to show that ill-balanced genius often coexists with defects in a large number of directions. The coexistence of genius with imbecility and even idiocy has been well illustrated by Langdon Down, who cites numerous instances thereof.[258] Defect in genius, whether of the imbecile stamp or otherwise, accompanied by deficiency, is not expressed in the genius, but in its deficient accompaniment. Even the mental instability of the highest type of defective genius is closely akin to that of the neurotic.

The hysterics, as has been shown by Des Champs,[259] are neurotic women in whom an aggravated sensibility exists. Neurotic women are divisible into three categories according to the predominance of one of three centres—cerebral, genital, and neuropathic. These types may be pure or intermixed. The general characteristics are an absolute want of equilibrium in sensibility and will power. There exists mobility of humour in direct relation with facile impressionability to external influences or to internal states. The nerves vibrate to all sentiments coming from within or without, and all are registered without proper relation. One fact chased by another is forgotten. Another produces a momentary hyperexcitation, which takes place of the truth, whence it is that falsehood is instinctive, but the patient protests her good faith if accused of the same. This lack of equilibrium leads to a decided modification of the mental faculties. Intellectual activity is over excited, but in diverse degrees and variable ways, according to the particular tendencies adopted. Absorbed by a preoccupation or controlled by an idea, they become indifferent to all else. Their ideas are abundant, and they rapidly pass from the idea to the act. Their vivid imagination, coupled with a bright intelligence, gives them a seducing aspect, but their judgment is singularly limited, attenuated, or false. They judge from a non-personal standpoint excellently. They are quick at discovering the faults of even their own relatives, but faults rightly attributed to themselves are repudiated. Their memory is capricious. They forget their faults and their acts under impulse, albeit these may be consciously done. The cerebral type is led by the intelligence. She has little or no coquetry; what coquetry there may be is the result of intention and temporary. There is an ethical sense, frankness and nobility in her ideas, disinterestedness and tact in her acts, and she is capable of friendship. Her tastes carry her to male pursuit, in which she succeeds. She becomes often what is called a “superior woman,” and too often what is called an “incomprehensible woman.” She has but little guile. To the sensual type voluptuousness is the aim of life and the centre of her acts and thoughts. She is well endowed with guile and extremely diplomatic. She is full of finesse, but not very delicate. Her lack of scruple often spoils her tact. She is ruseful, dissimulating, and unconsciously mendacious. She despises friendship and needs watching. If circumstances permit she loses all delicacy, reserve and modesty. She is destitute of scruples. Her crimes are coolly remorseless. The neuropathic type is one to which the grasshopper is a burden. Her nerves are always on edge. She is a heroic invalid who displays the air of a martyr about trivialities.

The character of the neurotic, as Kiernan remarks, recalls the observation of Milne-Edwards concerning the monkey character. Levity is one of its salient features, and its mobility is extreme. One can get it to shift in an instant from one mood or train of ideas to another. It is now plunged into black melancholy and in a moment may be vastly amused at some object presented to its attention.

Neuroticism in man differs in no respect from that in woman except that anæsthesia, paralysis of emotional origin, and conscious convulsions are less common. The male neurotic could be subdivided precisely as Des Champs has the hysteric. Neurotics are often long-lived, peculiarly resistant to certain acute and fatal disease, and are frequently retentive of their youthful appearance, which is to a certain extent an evidence of their resistance to the wear and tear of life and advancing old age, and due to emotional anæsthesia. Recognition of the neurotic tendency often induces the individual to take better care of himself. The youthful appearance may be due largely to arrest of facial development at an early age, the face thus retaining the child character throughout life. Considering, therefore, this class of neurotics, which does not include those afflicted with the more serious nervous disorders such as epilepsy, they may be looked upon as the victims of evolutionary processes that are constantly going on in the race and under civilised conditions.

Neurotics are not met with to any extent among barbarous races, but are numerous in civilised communities, where the weak are preserved from early death and then subjected to the struggle for existence. Neurotics are individuals naturally imperfect in some directions, but by the law of economy of growth they are often superior in others. Their disordered nervous functions and hyperæsthesia are not, necessarily, indicative of inferiority of general organisation compared to their ancestry. They may simply imply a more rapid advance in some one direction in the development of the nervous system than can be kept up with by the remainder. These defects may in some cases be the advance guards in the progress of the development of the race.

As the nervous system controls nutrition in all departments of the organism, anomalies occur with erratic nervous functions in such individuals. In these neurotics are often found defective development involving the bony and other structures. They have fine and delicate features, small jaws and defective teeth. These are the results of general systemic modifications connected with the neurotic state. The arthritic diathesis occurs also; it is one of the underlying conditions of many neurotic manifestations, often responsible for acquired bony deformities, not infrequently involving the jaws to some extent.

Neurotic degenerate symptoms from a mental standpoint are noticeable long before deformities of the osseous system are developed. They show themselves in mental weakness, extreme stupidity, and precocity. Under the first class the child is obstinate, quarrelsome, malignant, even immorally inclined, and is often spoken of as being wicked or vicious. Harriet C. B. Alexander[260] says the ruling instinct in the child of three or four is self-gratification. It destroys what it dislikes. Among the earliest manifestations of morbid mental activity in childhood are hallucinations, which depend on already registered perceptions.

In many instances even moral agencies produce sudden explosions of mental disorders. The inherited tendencies of childhood predispose to these attacks. As Clouston has shown, neuroses and psychoses not requiring hospital treatment are by no means uncommon in the too sensitive child with hereditary taint. Children of this class have crying fits and miserable periods on slight or no provocation. As Clouston has also shown, precocity, over-sensitiveness, unhealthy strictness in morals and religion for a child, or too vivid imagination, want of courage, thinness and craving for animal food, are common characters. These children are over-sensitive, over-imaginative, are too fearful to be physiologic, and tend, as a general thing, to be unhealthily religious, precociously intellectual, and at first hyperæsthetically conscientious.

The other class of children, as a rule, are very handsome babies and children. The brightness is noted by parents at a very early age, and they extol their many clever qualities and sayings. The tendency is for the parents to cultivate these precocious qualities and believe it to be the proper thing to encourage them; while in early life this class may possess the peculiarities of the other class and also show those of degeneracy. These children are the best scholars in the schoolroom and learn their lessons with apparently little or no study. They are usually thin, frail children, and very nervous. Very little food is taken and much of that is not assimilated. Especially is this true of the lime salts, which form bone and tooth structure. These lime salts are excreted through the kidneys and salivary glands. This is easily demonstrated by an examination of urine, mouth, and teeth. Large collections of tartar are always found in these cases. Children of both classes are sure to show stigmata of degeneracy. This period of degeneracy commences at the sixth year, or at about the time the first period of brain development ceases. The bulk of the brain has obtained its growth. In some the child commences to improve mentally very fast. In others mental development is slow. In still others it ceases altogether. From the time the second set of teeth begins to develop until the twelfth year, neuroses of development and stigmata of degeneracy are stamped upon the head, face, nose, jaws and teeth, and later any of the conditions mentioned under the heads of nutritive degeneracy and local perversion tendencies may appear.

Closely akin to these states are expressions of degeneracy manifesting themselves with some approach to regularity in periods, as in epilepsy and the periodical insanities. The periodical insanities may be simply emotional states of exaltation (as in mania), of extreme depression (as in melancholia), of stupor, or of mental confusion. They may show themselves in periodical acts, as in dipsomania. This condition differs from the condition called inebriety in the fact that it is a periodical expression of degeneracy whose form has been accidently determined, but which would exist even were its form changed. The differences are excellently outlined by Dana,[261] who divides intemperate drinkers into four classes: Periodical inebriates or dipsomaniacs, pseudo-inebriates, common drunkards and victims of delirium inebriosum. The disease in the first class is a periodical insanity. In the pseudo-inebriates the desire for drink is only one of many manifestations of a weakened constitution or inherently unstable nervous system. The third type are those which approximate the occasional criminals. Another periodical insanity is kleptomania, in which insane stealing occurs at intervals of greater or lesser regularity. Nymphomania or satyrasis is a periodical insanity in which there is an insane impulse for sexual intercourse. Pyromania is a periodical tendency to commit arson. All of these periodical conditions may occur alone or in combination with other degeneracies.