.">:!() Life and Letters of Francis Chiton 



42, Rutland Gate, S.W. February 5, 1905. 



Dkarest Milly, I shall be glad to hear next Saturday how you have I ided over your many 

 small calamities — indeed rather big ones. It was a great pleasure finding Bessy so unusually 

 well and bright. She will be now at Claverdon. Thanks to Eva's dragonship, I managed it all 

 without fatigue, including a sight of Edward and his wife and of Erasmus. But after returning, 

 and not I think in consequence of the trip, I got poorly and the Doctor kept me in bed all 

 yesterday and to-day up to the afternoon. Just a slight feverish attack and need for a dose. He 

 tells me I may keep an engagement of lunching quietly tomorrow with Major Leonard Darwin. 

 I want to hear all the latest news about George Darwin's preparations for South Africa. He has 

 a particularly strong staff of associates, as Presidents of the several Sections of the British 

 Association. Schuster has been here frequently and is working away. He gets into his rooms 

 at University College to-morrow, and spends half of each week there and half at his home in 

 Oxford. Our Committee meets on the 10th to arrange particulars. I have already drafted an 

 " unauthorised programme," which will be read with my other paper at the " So so " Society on 

 the 14th, Schuster going on with it if I break down. I shall try some of Warren's (£10,000 

 a year) method. You know, he had to lecture at Leamington when at the height of his fame. 

 He awoke with a stomach attack. His wife gave him some brandy. As he travelled down he 

 felt no better and took more. He went to Jephson who said — take a couple of glasses of port. 

 At length the lecture-hour came and he was got somehow into his seat on the platform, where 

 he sat with eyes shut and arms folded. The chairman arrived late and at once began with a 

 modest disclaimer of his own power of speaking, but "that does not matter as you will now hear 

 the eloquence of our distinguished guest, Mr Warren." Warren sat still ; his neighbour nudged 

 him, saying " Warren, get up." With difficulty he did so. Then, looking round the eager audience 

 with bloodshot eyes, he simply uttered the words "Bow, wow, wow" and collapsed back into 

 his chair. About the Darwins, Mrs Litchfield has just sent me a charming two volume Life and 

 Letters of her mother*. It is privately printed. The second volume is particularly interesting. 

 I have taken salon-lits from Calais to Bordighera on the 20th. We leave London on the 16th 

 and stay at Calais in the meantime. Love to all of you. 



Ever affectionately, Francis Galton. 



Insurance Data. 



During the course of this year (1905) Francis Galton endeavoured to move 

 the Institute of Actuaries to undertake, or prompt the Life Insurance Com- 

 panies to undertake, an inquiry into the heredity of disease. To the outsider 

 the proposal seems not only of great scientific interest, but of the highest com- 

 mercial importance to the business of life insurance. The biometricians had 

 shown definitely that length of life and general health were inherited charac- 

 ters. Galton's somewhat slender data indicated that certain diseases tend to 

 run in families (see our Vol. III A , pp. 70-76). My own more numerous family 

 schedules are convincing in their evidence that most broad classes of disease, 

 whether as cause of death or of ailment during life, have familial incidence. 

 But when we remember the variety of familial relationships, and these for 

 the two sexes, the range of age groups and the number of even broad classes 

 of disease, it will be recognised that the full data for a thousand families, 

 covering fifteen to twenty thousand individuals, are far from adequate to obtain 

 a definite numerical answer to such a question as the following: A.B., of aye 1 

 a, has a certain number of relatives C, D, E, F, ... who died at ages c, cl, e, 

 f, ... of diseases belonging to certain broad classes, and a certain number of 

 relatives C, D', E', F', ... of ages c', d', e',f, ... who are now suffering from 



* Mrs Charles Darwin's A Century of Family Letters issued some years after to the 

 public. 



