IQO MARRIAGE AND DISEASE. 



subject of cancer; for cancer is eminently a disease 

 of degeneracy, a disease of which the frequency in- 

 creases as years increase i.e., in proportion to the 

 number of persons living at each period of life, the 

 number of cancer cases increases as age increases. So 

 that unless a man have lived to the full age of life, 

 he may have died of some other disease than cancer, 

 and never have manifested the cancerous tendency 

 which he yet conveys in predisposition to his offspring. 

 The cases are very far from rare in which offspring 

 die of cancer long before their parents. The parent 

 lives, and maintains that cancer was never known in 

 the family, but a few years elapse, and then the 

 parent dies of the very same disease as the offspring 

 died of, having been quite ignorant of the convey- 

 ance of the disease of which the offspring died." * 



But it is not necessary to labour the point. That 

 cancer is eminently an hereditary disease is admitted 

 by all the greatest authorities in the medical world; 

 and that being admitted, it is impossible to deny 

 that hereditary transmission must be responsible for 

 a large proportion of the alarming increase which 

 has taken place in recent years. In almost every 

 case which occurs, if we can only trace back through 

 three or four generations, we are sure to discover 

 the taint. Like every other degeneration, tempera- 

 ment, or diathesis, it is the work of some consider- 

 able time to acquire the cancerous diathesis, and I do 

 not believe it is ever acquired during one lifetime. 

 * Trans. Path. Soc., voL xxv. 1874. 



