RHEUMATISM. 241 



with a force a hundred times increased upon those 

 who have inherited the same or any other degenera- 

 tive diathesis. Let me say again, that the marriage 

 of persons who have both inherited the same disease 

 tendency vastly increases the chances of the children 

 inheriting the same tendency, and that in an aggra- 

 vated form ; while it is equally certain that the 

 intermarriage of persons who have inherited different 

 disease tendencies, is hardly less dangerous to the 

 offspring. Indeed I question whether this last is 

 not the more dangerous, for while in the former it 

 is common for some of the children to escape tbe 

 family blight, it is rare indeed in marriages of the 

 latter description for any of them to escape one or 

 other of the parental tendencies to disease, or some 

 combination of both, more terrible than either. 



Dr. Benjamin W. Richardson says : " The worst 

 intermarriages of disease are those in which both 

 parents are the inheritors of the same disease. . . . 

 Intermarriages of distinct diseases are hardly less 

 dangerous. The intermarriage of cancer and con- 

 sumption is a combination specially fraught with 

 danger. . . . The intermarriage of rheumatic with 

 consumptive disease is productive of intermediate 

 maladies, in which the bony framework of the body 

 is readily implicated. Children suffering from hip- 

 joint disease morbus coxarius are common examples 

 of this combination. Hydrocephalic children are fre- 

 quent results of the same combination." * 

 * " Diseases of Modern Life." 



