36 MARRIAGE AND DISEASE. 



creative life. In the human female the ovaries have 

 been estimated to contain about 72,000 ova, while in 

 the male the vital units produced are simply innumer- 

 able. Therefore this magic germ must transmit its 

 powers to thousands of other cells. These other cells 

 are portions of the general organism of the parent, 

 and that these should bear some impress indicative 

 of their origin and former life is not too strained an 

 inference. These masses of protoplasm are part and 

 parcel of the adult animal organism, we know that 

 they are affected as other cells by certain diseases 

 contracted by the organism, and it is not too much 

 to suppose that, bathed in the same fluids and fed 

 from the same blood-stream, they, like every other 

 cell in the economy, should be liable to the action of 

 the environment ; and that this changed conditio'n, 

 whatever it may be, should re- appear in the new 

 creatures or organisms of which they are the first 

 cause and foundation, it is but reasonable to expect. 

 As Sir William Turner said in his address before the 

 British Association at Newcastle in 1889, "Those who 

 uphold the view that characters acquired by the soma 

 [ = individual] cannot be transmitted from parent to 

 offspring undoubtedly draw so large a cheque on the 

 bank of hypothesis, that one finds it difficult, if not 

 impossible, to honour it." 



In support of this theory of the non-transmissibility 

 of acquired characters, it is generally pointed out that 

 there is little or no proof of mutilations in the parent, 

 such as the loss of an eye or a limb, being reproduced 



