22 MARRIAGE AND DISEASE. 



the present. Speaking, however, from a purely scientific 

 standpoint, I will assert, without fear of contradiction 

 from those able to judge, that legislation tending to 

 limit the propagation of the insane, the epileptic, the 

 drunken, the criminal, and the pauper would have a 

 markedly beneficial effect upon the health and comfort 

 of our people. As Dr. Benjamin Ward Eichardson has 

 wisely said, " The first step towards the reduction of 

 disease is, beginning at the beginning, to provide for 

 the health of the unborn. The error commonly enter- 

 tained, that marriageable men and women have nothing 

 to consider except wealth, station, or social relation- 

 ships, demands correction. The offspring of marriage, 

 the most precious of all fortunes, deserves, surely, as 

 much forethought as is bestowed on the offspring of 

 the lower animals. If the intermarriage of disease 

 were considered in the same light as the intermarriage 

 of poverty, the hereditary transmission of disease, the 

 basis of so much misery in the world, would be at an 

 end in three, or at most four generations." * 



Yet, notwithstanding all that has been said of the 

 relentlessness of this law of heredity, the unfortunate 

 inheritor of a poorly or viciously developed mind or 

 body is not to fold his hands and say, " It is useless 

 for me to strive." Not a single passage in this book 

 is intended to support such a view. Let such unfor- 

 tunate work, and work patiently in a good cause. 

 Although he might as well hope to rid himself of his 

 shadow as of any deeply marked hereditary tendency, 

 * " Diseases of Modern Life." 



