1 84 MARRIAGE AND DISEASE. 



in certain families handed down from generation to 

 generation, so in other families is that degenerate con- 

 stitutional state, whose most frequent outward sign is 

 cancerous disease, regularly transmitted. The second 

 agency at work in the production of the predisposition 

 to cancer is made up of all the degenerating influences 

 of modern civilised life, which are constantly deterio- 

 rating the race, and deepening this and every other 

 pathological character. 



That cancer is a disease which points to degenera- 

 tion of the stock in which it appears is clear from 

 the close relationship which exists between it and other 

 admittedly degenerate conditions, such as scrofula, 

 suicide, and insanity. Sir William Gull* years ago 

 pointed out that scrofulous children were very fre- 

 quently the offspring of parents who had cancer, 

 or were members of families in which cancer was 

 common. On the other hand, the frequency with 

 which cancer attacks members of families showing 

 the epileptic, suicidal, or insane diathesis is notorious. 

 Again, just as we have seen that a commingling or 

 combination of the taints of insanity and epilepsy, 

 or epilepsy and drunkenness, &c., tends to further 

 degenerate the offspring to impotent idiocy the 

 lowest stage of degeneration compatible with a con- 

 tinuance of life so we find a combination of this 

 degenerate condition which predisposes to cancer with 

 another form of degeneracy will produce offspring 

 lower in the scale than either parent. Of this a very 

 * Address before British Medical Association, Oxford, 1883. 



