INHERITANCE OF ACQUIRED IMMUNITY 159 



and germ plasm, and whether the defect tell primarily or second- 

 arily upon the germ plasm of the individual, we have here 

 examples of conditions acquired by the individual being trans- 

 mitted to the offspring. 



But we can go further. Exogenous and bacterial intoxica- 

 tions are not the only intoxications. We recognise yearly more 

 and more the existence of states of truly endogenous intoxication, 

 auto-intoxications — of disturbed states of the constitution due 

 to disturbances in glandular activity or to excess of certain 

 internal secretions, or of the substances ordinarily neutralised 

 by the same. Such disturbances, acting on the germ cells, 

 would be truly somatogenic. 



If gout and the gouty diathesis are, as many hold them to be, 

 of the nature of true auto-intoxications, if in a given percentage 

 of cases (in France 12 per cent, according to Bouchard) the 

 gouty state shows itself in those giving an absolutely negative 

 history of gout in their progenitors, then we are at liberty, I 

 think, to regard the gouty diathesis as an example of truly 

 somatogenic acquirement of an inherited and inheritable con- 

 stitutional state. 



Defect in body metabolism has led to intoxication of the 

 germ cells, and the offspring show a peculiar liability to be 

 the subjects of intoxications of the same order. Here what is 

 transmitted is a constitutional state, and that constitutional 

 state may manifest itself in more than one way, but no one will 

 deny that this is truly inheritance of an acquired condition. 



We must therefore, I hold, be prepared to admit the possi- 

 bility of the transmission in inheritance of certain orders of 

 acquired constitutional conditions ; we must see that it is not 

 necessary, with Weismann, to deny strenuously the inheritance 

 of each and every order of acquired defect, and that along the 

 lines of some such theory as that here outlined we gain 

 a fuller harmony between theoretical considerations regarding 

 the nature of inheritance and the facts as they present themselves 

 to us day after day. 



Conclusion 



Within the time at my disposal it has been impossible to 

 touch upon many aspects of inheritance which interest us 

 as medical men — upon spontaneous variations and their trans- 



