ACQUIRED CHARACTERS 81 



physical or physiological equipment, may be present 

 as a combination of characters in the germplasm, or 

 an individual, as the result of disease, may "ac- 

 quire" a generally weakened germplasm and so pro- 

 duce a progeny exhibiting general liability to disease; 

 but it is doubtful if such a condition can properly be 

 termed the inheritance of an acquired character, since 

 the particular definite disease in question is not de- 

 monstrably heritable. 



When alcoholism "runs in a family," its reappear- 

 ance in the son is probably due to the fact that he is 

 derived from the same weak strain of germplasm as 

 his father. The fact that the father succumbed to 

 the alcohol habit is not the determining cause of 

 drunkenness in the son. The same thing that caused 

 the father to become an alcoholic, namely, weak germ- 

 plasm, and not the resulting drunkenness in the parent, 

 is the causal factor for alcoholism in the son. 



At the same time it is entirely probable that heredi- 

 tary alcoholism may in some cases arise through 

 "parallel induction," that is to say, acquired alco- 

 holism may end in the simultaneous poisoning and 

 consequent modification of both the somatoplasm and 

 germplasm of the parent, with the result that the germ- 

 plasm has less resistance to alcoholism in a succeeding 

 generation. The offspring are consequently more 

 likely to succumb to the disease. This, however, is 

 not the inheritance of an acquired character or of a 

 definite somatic modification. 



When a man of the present generation has rheu- 

 matic gout, it is a severe stretch both of patriotism 



