CONSANGUINEOUS MARRIAGES. 267 



the mere fact of blood-relationship in the parents has 

 been disproved. 



It cannot be said that consanguineous unions are 

 repugnant to nature, although custom and religious 

 teaching have developed a repugnance thereto in 

 civilised man. From the early history of mankind 

 we learn that marriages between very close blood 

 relations were both legal and common. " The Persians, 

 Tartars, Scythians, Medes, Phoenicians, Egyptians, 

 and Peruvians not only married their sisters, but 

 their daughters and their mothers. Instances of such 

 marriages among the members of the royal families 

 of antiquity are well known." Later, the laws of the 

 ancient Germans permitted consanguineous marriages 

 of a less glaring kind, as did also the laws of the 

 Arabs until the time of Mahomet ; and the Jews, 

 notwithstanding the strict injunctions of Moses, con- 

 tinue them until the present day, as do also that 

 strange people, the Gipsies. 



Nevertheless, the frequency of imperfection in the 

 children of such marriages has been noticed from 

 the time of Moses, or earlier, as is proved by the 

 fact that all the great moral codes Hindu, Mosaic, 

 Eoman, Christian, and Mussulman, have alike for- 

 bidden such unions. All these laws were evidently 

 founded on the belief, which is still generally accepted 

 by those who have not studied the matter, that the un- 

 happy results so frequently following consanguineous 

 marriages, depended upon the mere fact that the 

 parents were of the same blood. This, however, has 



