iv INHERITED INJURIES 177 



which in the causes of its origin is closely similar to a 

 perpetually repeated mutilation. Great periods of time, 

 however, have been necessary in this case for the accomplish- 

 ment of the final result. 



I add here some cases of inherited injuries which seem to 

 me to be authentic. A. Decandolle describes one such case 

 with the assurance that it is perfectly true. 1 In the year 

 1797 a girl twenty-one years old was thrown from a carriage, 

 and in consequence had a scar about five centimetres wide over 

 the left ear and temple, which remained without hair. Married 

 in 1799, she bore a son in 1800, in whom the hair was absent 

 from the same area, and remained so. The son of this man, 

 born in 1836, had no such defect, but it was present in his 

 grandson born in 1866, and in 1884 in this last individual, 

 when he was eighteen years old, the peculiarity was disap- 

 pearing. 



Dr. Meissen, of Falkenberg, records in the number of 

 Humboldt for June 1887 the following case of inheritance of 

 an injury in his own family : " When I was seven or eight 

 years old I had the chicken-pox, and I recollect with com- 

 plete distinctness that I scratched one of the pustules on 

 the right temple, in consequence of which I had a small 

 white scar at this spot. Exactly the same scar, which I 

 had of course ceased to think of, on exactly the same spot, 

 was present on my little son, now fifteen months old, when 

 he came into the world. The resemblance is so perfect that 

 it surprises everyone who sees the little mark." 



My assistant, Dr. Vosseler, relates that his mother in her 

 eighteenth year injured the ring-finger of her right hand by 

 squeezing it between the door -latch and the door, so that it 



1 Alphonse Decandolle, Histoire des sciences et des sarants depuis deux siecles, 

 precedee et suivie d'autres etudes sur des sujets scientifiques, en particulier sur 

 Cfieredite et la selection, Geneve, Bale, H. Georg, 1885. Cf. also on the whole 

 question : Lucas, Traits philosophique et physiologique de I'heredite, etc., Paris, 

 1847 ; and E. Roth, Die Thatsachen derVererbung, Berlin, 1885. 

 N 



