THE BRADSHAW LECTUEE 7 



He then proceeds to account for these hereditary- 

 defects : 



John Hunter, it is clear, owed his strumous arthritic dia- 

 thesis to the circumstance that his father was in his seventieth 

 year when John was conceived and had at least one of the 

 diseases of the gouty habit, namely, " gravel." 



He sums up : 



He was a typical man of his diathesis ; with a predisposi- 

 tion to tuberculosis and atheroma, he, nevertheless, from the 

 vigorous nutrition of his nervous system, was capable of great 

 mental labour.* 



Such is the libellous description given of the 

 greatest surgeon of his day.f 



Tuberculosis. 



Of diseases believed to be hereditary, the con- 

 stitutional origin of none was taught with more 

 dogmatic certainty than tuberculosis before the 

 discovery of Koch's bacillus; and even now, 

 though the various modes of entry and the 



* ' Medical Times and Gazette,' vol. i, 1862. 



f" The arthritic diathesis has been deprived of acute rheumatism 

 by the discovery of the Diplococcus rlieumaticus, and if Mr. 

 Goadby's observations prove correct as to a bacillus connected 

 with tooth-sockets (published in 'The Lancet' of March llth, 

 1911) being the cause of osteoarthritis, the diathesis will be still 

 further depleted. 



