1 86 MARRIAGE AND DISEASE. 



As it was, four of them had not sufficient vitality to 

 enable them to hold on to life until that age at which 

 cancer most commonly appears, and they succumbed 

 one after another to tubercular disease, the scourge 

 of those bankrupt in vitality. 



Now, in the first place, this " young man of marked 

 cancerous proclivity " should never have married, and 

 it is possible that had he been convinced as to what 

 would be the outcome of his marriage he would have 

 foregone the pleasures of matrimony. But if he would 

 marry, then he should have chosen a partner free, 

 so far as possible, from degeneration. Had he done 

 so, it is possible some of the children might have 

 escaped; but as it was, the offspring had no chance 

 of coming back to the path of health, and Nature 

 stamped them out as unfit. 



The family history which I gave at page 49 shows 

 very clearly the close kinship existing between the 

 cancerous diathesis and those other forms of consti- 

 tutional degeneration whose outward symptoms are 

 infantile convulsions, suicide, epilepsy, insanity, tuber- 

 cular disease, and sterility. The father of this family 

 died of cancer of the stomach at sixty-six years of 

 age. He had a brother who cut his throat at fifty- 

 six; the mother, an apparently healthy woman, "died 

 of a fit " at the age of fifty-four. To this pair seven 

 children were born, as follows: I. A son who died 

 of cancer of the stomach at fifty-eight. 2. A son 

 who died in convulsions, aged thirteen weeks. 3, 

 4, and 5. Three daughters who died of consumption, 



