[ 454 J 
XCVII. Notices respecting New Books. 
A Treatise on the supposed hereditary Properties of Diseases, 
containing Remarks on the unfounded Terrors and ill-judged 
Cautions consequent on such erroneous Opinions; with Notes 
illustraiive of the Subject, particularly in Madness and 
Scrofula. By JoserpH Apams, M.D. F.L.S. of the London 
College of Physicians, Ge. 
Ts inquiry is equally novel and important. Hitherto one 
class of philosophers has shrunk from it with a kind of supersti- 
tious awe, while another has been deterred from ever spending 
a thought on the subject, by the vulgar disgusting manner in 
which it has been viewed by some foreign writers. Yet there 
is perhaps no physical inquiry more intimately allied with mo- 
rality, of which all persons consider themselyes competent 
judges. Many of the diseases called hereditary are rather the 
result of similarity in moral and physical education, of imitative 
habits, than of any physical organization. Others depend on 
local climate, disparity of age, intemperance either in regimen 
or exercise, or erroneous theories. To ascertain the constitu- 
tional from the accidentally transmitted diseases, Dr. Adams 
makes the necessary distinctions between a family and an here- 
ditary peculiarity of constitution, the former being confined to 
a single generation, to brothers and sisters of the same parents, 
while the latter is traced from generation to generation. “‘ Dis- 
eases either appear at birth, and are called congenital or connate, 
or they arise afterwards: the first only can with propriety be 
called hereditary or family diseases: all others should be consi- 
dered as hereditary or family susceptibilities to certain diseases. 
The degrees of susceptibility should be distinguished by appro-~ 
priate terms. If the family or hereditary susceptibility is such 
that the disease, though not existing at birth, is afterwards in- 
duced without any external causes, or by causes which cannot be 
distinguished from the functions of the ceconomy, such a state 
may be called a Disposition to the disease. But if the suscepti- 
bility, though greater than. is remarked in other families, is so 
far less than a disposition as always to require the operation of 
some external cause to induce the disease ; this minor suscepti- 
bility may he called a PREDISPosITION to the disease. Connate or 
congenital diseases are more commonly family than hereditary ; 
some of them, being mortal, as connate hydrocephalus, cannot 
be transmitted; other connate peculiarities are more properly 
organic privations or imperfections, as connate deafness or cons 
nate cataract, DuisposiTions are found in some fainilies to dis- 
eases 
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