PROVISIONAL PROPOSITIONS 291 



normality, partly associated with weakness in the blood-vessels, 

 which do not contract as they should and are apt to break, 

 and partly connected with a lack of coagulating power in the 

 blood. It is usually confined to males. But as it passes from 

 a father through a daughter to a grandson, and so on, it must 

 be a latent part of the germinal inheritance of the females, 

 though for some obscure physiological reasons it fails to find 

 expression in them, or has its expression quite disguised. Colour- 

 blindness or Daltonism has been recorded (Horner) through 

 the males only of seven generations. Dejerine cites another 

 case {fide Appenzeller) in which all the males in a family history 

 had cataract through four generations. There are other in- 

 stances of what is sometimes awkwardly called the unilateral 

 transmission of abnormal qualities. 



Edward Lambert, born in 1717, is said to have been covered 

 with " spines." His six children showed the same peculiarity, 

 which began to be manifest from the sixth to the ninth month 

 after birth. One of his children grew up and handed on the 

 peculiarity to another generation. Indeed, it is said to have 

 persisted for five generations, and in the males only, — unilateral 

 transmission. (See Phil. Trans. 1755 ; Prichard, History of 

 Mankind, 1851.) 



2. The Expression of Disease-inheritance may change 

 from Generation to Generation. — " Diseased organisms are apt 

 to breed disease, but not always, though sometimes, their own 

 disease." This cautious statement seems to be well borne 

 out by the facts. 



Hannot {Arch., gen. de Medecine, 1895) gives the following 

 illustrations. A typical gouty subject, with his joints hampered 

 by accumulations of urates, may beget a son as gouty as himself, 

 or it may be that the son is asthmatic. An alcoholic patient 

 may have an epileptic child. A tubercular mother may have 

 a child with Pott's disease. A man infected with syphihs may 

 have a son afflicted with general paralysis. In regard to the 



