THE 



POPULAR SCIENCE 

 MONTHLY. 



AUGUST, 1879. 



KEMOVAL OF INHERITED TENDENCIES TO 



DISEASE. 



By J. K. BLACK, M. D. 



A LIMITED collection of statistics and the observation of phy- 

 sicians concur in showing that about two thirds of our people 

 inherit a tendency to some disease, or to a defective vitality in some 

 organ of the body. In very many instances the overshadowing heri- 

 tage is toward an untimely death, while in others it is simply toward 

 some chronic insufficiency which embitters many a year of life. 



The number who think themselves doomed to a premature death 

 by some innate blood defect is very great. At this moment hundreds 

 of thousands are ready to interpret every sign of thoracic derange- 

 ment as the harbinger to the development of that dreaded inheritance 

 pulmonary consumption. Taking into consideration that, according 

 to the last census, about seventy thousand throughout our land are 

 swept into the grave each year by this disease, cause for alarm seems 

 sufficiently ample. The aggregate of foreboding, of suffering, and of 

 heart-wringing grief at untimely separations through this scourge 

 alone, would be terrible to contemplate were we capable of appre- 

 hending it as a whole. Add to this the heritage in numerous instances 

 of a tendency to rheumatism, to gout, to epilepsy, to insanity, to can- 

 cel', and the host of those distressed in mind or in body attains a pain- 

 ful magnitude. A subordinate and large group of heritages are yet to 

 be added. Every year thousands are brought into the world with di- 

 gestive organs so imperfect that the slightest indiscretion precipitates 

 misery ; others are tormented for life by the development of an inher- 

 ited tendency to migraine, to neuralgia, or to asthma ; and not a few 

 through the same agency lose their sight or their hearing during the 

 prime of life. 



VOL. XT. 28 



