39+ THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



have been attacked at an advanced age, and who had conse- 

 quently resisted a large number of provocative agencies, fewer 

 anomalies are found than among those who were attacked in in- 

 fancy or youth. If the former held out against a larger num- 

 ber of occasional causes, it was because they were less predisposed, 

 as they were less abnormal. 



Teratological abnormities resemble neuropathies not only in 

 their origin and the characteristics of their hereditability, but there 

 can be found in their genesis, besides heredity, all the defective 

 conditions of generation and gestation that have been charged, 

 and justly, with the faculty of giving rise to disorders of the nerv- 

 ous system emotions, shocks, defective food, alcoholism or any 

 other intoxication, infections, etc. The greater frequency has 

 been noticed of deformities among natural children in cases of 

 conception during intoxication, disproportion in the age of pro- 

 genitors, etc. 



As the masculine sex appears to present a more marked tend- 

 ency to variation in respect to development and in mental disor- 

 ders, so it seems to do likewise as regards morphology. Mr. 

 Francis Warner, who has recently examined fifty thousand chil- 

 dren in English schools, found 8'27 per cent of physical anoma- 

 lies among the boys and only 678 per cent among the girls. 

 Functional anomalies were also more frequent among the boys. 



Like monstrosity, morbid predisposition is the result of a dis- 

 turbed evolution. In the same way as in families anomalies in 

 form may manifest themselves in very diverse localizations, so 

 anomalies in structure may be variously seated. It is thus com- 

 prehensible how, under the influence of the different conditions 

 that usually provoke the manifestations of hereditary diseases 

 puberty, menopause, fatigue, physical or moral shocks, intoxica- 

 tions, or infections we observe diverse affections appearing in 

 the same family, but most usually bearing upon the same system. 

 It is worthy of remark that most of these provocative conditions 

 act simply by virtue of the exhaustion that results from them. 

 Growth is usually included among the conditions favorable to the 

 development of disease ; but in reality periods of growth, when 

 the processes of nutrition are most energetic, can be and are noth- 

 ing but periods of resistance ; and the susceptibility to attack is 

 developed in the times following periods of growth, particularly 

 of active growth. 



The disturbances in evolution of the nervous system are most 

 important in the consideration of the origin of diseases because 

 that system is dominant in the phenomena of the life of nutrition, 

 as well as in those of the life of relation. These disturbances 

 may account for the numerous varieties of morbid manifestations 

 in pathological families. 



