268 MARRIAGE AND DISEASE. 



upon inquiry proved to be erroneous; yet this dis- 

 covery has in no way lessened the practical utility 

 of the law forbidding the marriage of blood relations. 

 In fact, there is much more need of a strict observ- 

 ance of this law nowadays among our highly civilised 

 communities, than there was among the primitive 

 peoples to whom it was first given. 



We have it recorded in Holy Writ that Abraham 

 was married to his half-sister, Isaac to his first 

 cousin once removed, and Jacob to his first cousin, 

 and that the stock from this root flourished exceed- 

 ingly. Huth, in his " Marriage of Near Kin," cites 

 several instances of much the same state of affairs 

 occurring regularly at the present day among certain 

 isolated communities, such as the inhabitants of St. 

 Kilfo, Pitcairn, and Iceland, without any apparent 

 evilWconsequences to the race. It is also certain 

 that such marriages are, or were, common among the 

 North American Indians and the South Sea Islanders, 

 peoples among whom idiocy and other degenerate 

 hereditary conditions were remarkably rare. In these 

 cases, however, it must be noticed that we have 

 peculiarly healthy communities to deal with, and 

 therein lies the secret of such intermarriage prov- 

 ing innocent of evil to the offspring. Were such 

 marriages common among the neurotic, decrepit, 

 scrofulous, and otherwise degenerate dwellers in our 

 great cities of to-day, the result would be disastrous. 



So long ago as 1869 the New York State Medical 

 Society appointed a committee of its members to 



