THE HEREDITY OF RICHARD ROE. 



135 



are products of self-deception or plain lying.* Probably 

 the period of gestation is too short for peculiar nervous 

 states to produce far-reaching changes in hereditary en- 

 dowments. On the other hand, doubt and ridicule are 

 not argument, and there may be some reality in influ- 

 ences in which the world has so long believed ; but these 

 phenomena, if existing, belong to the realm of abnormal 

 nerve action or of altered nutrition, not to heredity. 



The value of the prenatal influences acting upon 

 Richard Roe we may indicate as Z, giving the symbol 

 an indefinite and, if you please, a low value. But this 

 is not the whole story. There are many phenomena of 

 transmitted qualities that can not be charged to hered- 

 ity. Just as a sound mind demands a 

 Transmission SQUnd bod SQ doeg ft s()und chnd de _ 

 of impaired 

 v i ta li ty mand a sound mother. Bad nutrition 



before as well as after birth may neu- 

 tralize the most vigorous inheritance within the germ 

 cell. A child well conceived may yet be stunted in de- 

 velopment. Even the father may transmit weakness 

 in development as a handicap to hereditary strength. 

 The many physical vicissitudes between conception and 

 birth may determine the rate of early growth or the im- 

 petus of early development. In a sense, the impulse of 



* For example, Dr. Fearn cites the following case : "A mother 

 witnessed the removal of one of the bones (metacarpal) from her 

 husband's hand which greatly shocked and alarmed her. A short 

 time after she had a child who was born without the correspond- 

 ing bone which was removed from the father." (Report of Med- 

 ical Association of Alabama, 1850, as quoted by Dr. S. B. Elliott 

 in the Arena, March, 1894.) If this report is true, our ideas of 

 the formation and dissolution of parts of the skeleton must be 

 materially changed. We must believe either that the metacarpal 

 bones are formed just before birth, after all the rest of the skele- 

 ton, or else that bones once formed may be reabsorbed under the 

 influence of nervous shock or hysteria. Either view is nonsense. 



