312 THE SIGNIFICANCE OP SEXUAL REPRODUCTION 



symptoms of epilepsy are by no means invariably transmitted; 

 they are in fact absent from the great majority of cases, and the 

 very small proportion in which they do occur, exhibit the symptoms 

 of other diseases in addition to those of epilepsy. The offspring- 

 are either quite healthy (thirteen out of thirty cases) or they suffer 

 from disturbances of the nervous system, such as the above- 

 mentioned motor and trophic paralysis, symptoms which are not 

 characteristic of epilepsy: however in some of the latter epilepsy 

 is also present. 



If therefore we wish to express the matter correctly we must 

 not state that epilepsy is transmitted to the offspring-, but we must 

 express the facts in the following- manner : animals which have 

 been rendered epileptic by artificial means, transmit to some of their 

 offspring a tendency to suffer from various nervous diseases, viz. 

 from motor paralysis, to a less degree from sensory, and to a high 

 degree from trophic paralysis ; in rare cases, when the symptoms 

 of paralysis are very marked, epilepsy is also transmitted. 



If we now remember that a considerable number of diseases are 

 already known to be caused by the presence of living organisms 

 in the body, and that these diseases may be transmitted from one 

 organism to another in the form of germs, ought we not to con- 

 clude from the above-mentioned facts, that the symptoms are due 

 to an unknown microbe which finds its nutritive medium in the 

 nervous tissues, rather than to suppose that they are due to 

 morphological changes, such as a modification of the histological 

 or molecular structure of certain parts of the nervous system? 

 At all events, it would be more difficult to understand the trans- 

 mission of such a structural change, than the passage of a bacillus 

 into the sperm- or germ-cell of the parent. There is no ascertained 

 fact which supports the former assumption, but it is very probable 

 that the transmission of syphilis, small-pox and tuberculosis 1 is to be 

 explained by the latter method, although the bacilli have not yet 

 been detected in the reproductive cells. Furthermore, this method 

 of transmission has been rigidly proved in the case of the mus- 



1 A direct transmission of the germs of disease through the reproductive cells 

 has lately been rendered probable in the case of tuberculosis, for the bacilli have 

 been found in tubercles in the lungs of an eight- months' fetal calf, the mother being 

 affected at the time with acute tuberculosis. However it is not impossible that 

 infection may have arisen through the placenta. See ' Fortschritte der Medicin,' 

 Bd. Ill, 1885, p. 198. 



