334 rapidly squanders the inheritance from his aunt and descends into the abject poverty that kills him.
In Lo prohibido, Galdós indulges in an analysis of a pathological family history clearly derived from the concept of hereditary determinism that is the hallmark of degeneration theory. The entire Bueno de Guzman family is flawed by a range of physical and psychiatric disturbances from which only the idealized Camila contrives to escape. Rafael‘s account of the family history, with its lunatics confined in asylums, its diátesis neuropática and its, ―singularidad constitutiva que viene reproduciéndose de generación en generación‖ is reminiscent of the medical genealogy that was presented by degenerationist medical expert witnesses at contemporary criminal trials such as those of Otero in 1880 and Garayo in 1880 (Conseglieri and Villasante 219). The locura crematística of Eloisa leads her to a more gentrified form of the prostitution to which Isidora descends. José Marìa‘s neurotic obsession causes him to degenerate physically as well as morally, as he declines to his early death. The chronic health problems of Rafael and Raimundo also appear to have elements of degeneration, and the apparently eccentric kleptomania of Serafín may have a more sinister interpretation, as noted above.
In the last of the four novels, Fortunata y Jacinta, Galdós creates a picture of Maxi almost certainly intended to represent delayed congenital syphilis and he combines it with the paranoid, hallucinating psychosis known to be associated with its cerebral involvement, general paralysis of the insane. This is a most vivid example of hereditary determinism and, for all the drama and aspirations of his life, Maxi‘s fate is sealed from the very beginning; his degeneration to permanent madness is