age, as that of a grandfather, father, and son, who all committed suicide near
their fiftieth year. Many other cases could be given, as of a whole family who
became insane at the age of forty. (14/41. Piorry page 109; Prosper Lucas tome
2 page 759.) Other cerebral affections sometimes follow the same rule,--for
instance, epilepsy and apoplexy. A woman died of the latter disease when
sixty-three years old; one of her daughters at forty-three, and the other at
sixty-seven: the latter had twelve children, who all died from tubercular
meningitis. (14/42. Prosper Lucas tome 2 page 748.) I mention this latter case
because it illustrates a frequent occurrence, namely, a change in the precise
nature of an inherited disease, though still affecting the same organ.

Asthma has attacked several members of the same family when forty years old,
and other families during infancy. The most different diseases, such as angina
pectoris, stone in the bladder, and various affections of the skin, have
appeared in successive generations at nearly the same age. The little finger
of a man began from some unknown cause to grow inwards, and the same finger in
his two sons began at the same age to bend inwards in a similar manner.
Strange and inexplicable neuralgic affections have caused parents and children
to suffer agonies at about the same period of life. (14/43. Prosper Lucas tome
3 pages 678, 700, 702; Sedgwick ibid April 1863 page 449 and July 1863 page
162. Dr. J. Steinan 'Essay on Hereditary Disease' 1843 pages 27, 34.)

I will give only two other cases, which are interesting as illustrating the
disappearance as well as the appearance of disease at the same age. Two
brothers, their father, their paternal uncles, seven cousins, and their
paternal grandfather, were all similarly affected by a skin-disease, called
pityriasis versicolor; "the disease, strictly limited to the males of the
family (though transmitted through the females), usually appeared at puberty,
and disappeared at about the age of forty or forty-five years." The second
case is that of four brothers, who when about twelve years old suffered almost