312 MARRIAGE AND DISEASE. 



forms in rheumatism, gout, syphilis, cancer, phthisis, 

 and heart-disease, and is most certainly a constitu- 

 tional disease. In some cases, as in chronic alcohol- 

 ism, it appears to arise from actual irritation of the 

 kidneys by the large quantities of alcohol they are 

 continually called upon to cast out of the system ; 

 but even in these cases I prefer to look upon it 

 as a constitutional affection, and class the tissue 

 degeneration in the kidney of the drunkard in the 

 same category with that which is found in his brain, 

 heart, liver, blood-vessels, and other tissues of the 

 body. 



Dr. Dickinson brought a curious case of Bright's 

 disease before the Pathological Society of London in 

 1889. In this case he was able to trace the disease 

 through at least four generations. It affected fourteen 

 out of twenty-three persons, and was traceable also 

 in a collateral branch of the family. Not the least 

 interesting fact in this case was that the portraits 

 of the family, which have been preserved since the 

 time of Edward IV., showed the pallor peculiar to 

 persons suffering from disease of the kidney. This, 

 however, I take to have arisen from changes in the 

 pigments used by the artists, rather than from the 

 existence of the disease in these early ancestors, as such 

 a disease would assuredly exterminate a family before 

 so many generations had come and gone.* 



There are many other disease tendencies and bodily 

 imperfections, among which might be mentioned al- 



* British Medical Journal, May II, 1889. 



