40 MARRIAGE AND DISEASE. 



Again, no one will deny that the appetite of the 

 drunkard is an acquired character, and cannot he 

 transmit his accursed appetite to his children ? Cannot 

 he drink himself into epilepsy or insanity, and after- 

 wards beget children who shall inherit his shattered 

 nervous system, just as the young of the guinea-pigs 

 in which Brown-Sequard had artificially induced 

 epilepsy inherited that diseased condition ? Cannot 

 the compositor or the dressmaker, by over-work in 

 ill-ventilated rooms, by want of pure air and healthy 

 food, develop a predisposition to phthisis ; and shall 

 we expect the children of such to escape scot-free and 

 inherit nothing of their parents' acquired degenerate 

 condition ? 



If acquired characters cannot be transmitted, as 

 some say they cannot, how are we to explain the 

 degeneracy and early extinction of the poor families 

 of our great cities, where, in three or four generations, 

 poverty, starvation, and dirt modify the family to 

 extinction ? On this subject Dr. Maudsley says : 

 " Over-population leads to deterioration of the health 

 of the community by overcrowding and the insanitary 

 condition of dwelling-houses which it occasions in 

 towns. Not fevers only, but scrofula, perhaps phthisis, 

 and certainly general deterioration of nutrition are 

 thus generated and transmitted as evil heritages to 

 future generations ; the acquired ill of the parent 

 Incomes tlie inborn infirmity of the offspring." As we 

 have already heard, Mr. Cantlie failed after prolonged 

 and careful search to find a single person of the poorer 



