PRACTICAL CONSIDERATIONS 303 



judicially affect the germ-cells, and therefore the offspring. 

 But this is more remediable than specific changes in the germ- 

 plasm. Thus, an authoritative expert writes : " Every diseased 

 condition, which is primarily of exogenous origin, may be 

 combated. Siihlata catcsa, toUitur effectiis. Intra-uterine in- 

 fection and direct toxic deterioration of the germ may be 

 preventible and will be increasingly prevented. The struggle 

 against sexual diseases and against exaggerated alcoholism and 

 similar toxic deteriorations is not merely the business of the 

 physician; it is the attainable objective of racial hygiene " (freely 

 translated from Martins, 1905, p. 39). It has been said by 

 another well-known authority that consumption — taken early 

 enough — is one of the most curable of diseases ! Prof. E. Ray 

 Lankester is sanguine enough to say that if men would boldly 

 and wholeheartedly enter into possession of their kingdom, " aU 

 epidemic disease could be abolished in fifty years." 



Our view of the harm done by an ill-considered widespread 

 belief in the transmissibility of modificational or exogenous 

 diseases has been well expressed by one of the keenest workers 

 in the Public Health service: "The nightmare of the specific 

 inheritance of acquired diseases overloads the spontaneity of 

 life, paralyses the will, and hampers the preventive service in 

 its efforts to improve the environment. Weismannism exalts 

 the social inheritances, which, as the great organs of selection, 

 constitute the basis of preventive medicine " (W. Leslie Mac- 

 kenzie). 



(4) In regard to constitutional diseases, it seems on the whole 

 that " the inheritance of predispositions to particular diseases " 

 is a more accurate description of the facts than the common 

 phrase, " the inheritance of disease." There is no doubt that 

 many predispositions to particular constitutional diseases are 

 inherited. What have we to set against this ? We must 

 recognise that every item in an inheritance requires an 

 appropriate nurture if it is to be expressed, or expressed fully. 



