[42] Die Continuitaet des Keimplasma als Grundlage einer Theorie
    der Vererbung.  A. Weismann.  Jena, 1885. Natural Inheritance. 
    F. Galton.

If we do not inherit the acquired faculties and habits of our parents, it is unfortunately too true that we inherit their diseases and the connection between disease and crime is a fact which cannot be denied.  In many cases it is perfectly true that persons suffering from disease or physical degeneracy do not become criminals, in most cases they do not; at the same time a larger proportion of such persons fall into a lawless life than is the case with people who are free from inherited infirmities.  The undoubted tendency of physical infirmity is to disturb the temper, to weaken the will, and generally to disorganise the mental equilibrium.  Such a tendency, when it becomes very pronounced, leads its unhappy possessor to perpetrate offenses against his fellow-men, or, in other words, to commit crime.  In a recent communication to a German periodical, Herr Sichart, director of prisons in the kingdom of Wurtemburg, has shown that a very high percentage of criminals are the descendants of degenerate parents.  Herr Sichart’s inquiries extended over several years and included 1,714 prisoners.  Of this number 16 per cent. were descended from drunken parents; 6 per cent. from families in which there was madness; 4 per cent. from families addicted to suicide; 1 per cent. from families in which there was epilepsy.  In all, 27 per cent. of the offenders, examined by Herr Sichart were descended from families in which there was degeneracy.  According to these figures more than one fourth of the German prison population have received a defective organisation from their ancestry, which manifests itself in a life of crime.

In France and Italy the same state of things prevails.  Dr. Corre is of opinion that a very large proportion of persons convicted of bad conduct in the French military service are distinctly degenerate either in body or mind.  Dr. Virgilio says that in Italy 32 per cent. of the criminal population have inherited criminal tendencies from their parents.  In England there is no direct means of testing the amount of degeneracy among the criminal classes, but, in all likelihood, it is quite as great as elsewhere.  According to the report of the Medical Inspector of convict prisons for 1888-9, the annual number of deaths from natural causes, among the convict population, is from 10 to 12 per 1000.  Let us compare those figures with the death rate of the general population as recorded in the Registrar-General’s report for 1888.  The annual death rate from all causes of the general population, between the ages of 15 and 45, is about 7 per 1000.  I have selected the period of life between 15 and 45 for the reason that it corresponds most closely with the average age of criminals.  If deaths from accident are excluded from the mortality returns of the general