arent. In the family of Le Compte blindness was inherited during three
generations, and no less than thirty-seven children and grandchildren
were all affected at about the same age, namely seventeen or
eighteen.[172] In another case a father and his four children all
became blind at twenty-one years old; in another, a grandmother grew
blind at thirty-five, her daughter at nineteen, and three grandchildren
at the ages of thirteen and eleven.[173] So with deafness, two
brothers, their father and paternal grandfather, all became deaf at the
age of forty.[174]

Esquirol gives several striking instances of insanity coming on at the
same 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.[175] 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.[176] 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.

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Asthma has attacked several members of the same family when forty years
old, and other families during infancy. The most different diseases, 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.[177]

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 th