whose production he most wishes to see encouraged—real geniuses—may carry the taint. The exaggerated claims of the Italian anthropologist C. Lombroso and his school, in regard to the close relation between genius and insanity, have been largely disproved; yet there remains little doubt that the two sometimes do go together; and such supposed epileptics as Mohammed, Julius Cæsar, and Napoleon will at once be called to mind. To apply sweeping restrictive measures would prevent the production of a certain amount of talent of a very high order. The situation can only be met by dealing with every case on its individual merits, and recognizing that it is to the interests of society to allow some very superior individuals to reproduce, even though part of their posterity may be mentally or physically somewhat unsound.
A field survey in two typical counties of Indiana (1916) showed that there were 1.8 recognizable epileptics per thousand population. If these figures should approximately hold good for the entire United States, the number of epileptics can hardly be put at less than 150,000. Some of them are not anti-social, but many of them are.