265 much of the theme of Lo prohibido, a less ludic and more sombre aspect to Galdós‘s inclusion of so much medical detail should be considered.
As the characters of Lo prohibido interact with each other and José María ponders the meaning of family events and their parallels with the corruption and insanity of Madrid society, references to degeneration recur. When, for instance, José María first encounters the wildly eccentric Camila, he considers, ―si no era loca la faltaba muy poco‖ with, ―ojos [...] como algunos que solemos ver cuando visitamos un manicomio‖ (prohibido 152), perhaps raising the question later of what it tells us about him that he should so idolize one who first seemed to him to be nearly mad. The good-for-nothing cousin, Raimundo, detached from reality in the excesses of his imagination, is able to recognize his own lethargy in José María, ―una manifestación del estado adinámico,406 carácter patológico del siglo XIX en las grandes poblaciones‖ (prohibido 179) and, specifically in Madrid, the moral degeneration to which it leads, ―el mal madrileño, esta indolencia, esta enervación que nos lleva a ser tolerantes con las infracciones de toda ley, así moral como económica‖ (prohibido 569). Galdós has Raimundo drawing a parallel between the moral and physical degeneration of José María and that of Madrid society.407 Raimundo‘s preference for imaginative excess over practical labor is shared with Isidora and with Alejandro Miquis and illustrates
estado adinámico: it is interesting that this preoccupation with lethargy in the early 1880s foreshadows the pained preoccupation with national abulia of the writers of the Generation of 1898 in the following decade (Shaw 14). 407 moral and physical degeneration of José María and that of Madrid society: wise words and unheeded warnings in the mouths of the mad, such as those of Raimundo, is a recurring feature in Galdós as is apparent in the observations of Canencia and the canónigo in La desheredada, and Isabel de Godoy and Jesús Delgado in El doctor Centeno. It is the subject of Peter Bly‘s book The Wisdom of Eccentric Old Men (2004). Eoff observes that, ―Galdós characteristically presents favorite ideas through persons who are considered mad by society.‖ (Eoff, novels 117) 406