Ill 



organic or tissue derangement or degeneracy of any kind, he 

 too will at least have inherited a predisposition to the same. 

 This I think may be accepted as a broad statement of a 

 general truth the truthfulness of which is not assailed even 

 when we consider the effect of such modifying factors as 

 individual varieties of age, sex, and circumstances. The 

 constitutional weakness, whether local or general, or the 

 morbific predisposition transmitted by the parents may lie 

 dormant in one generation, but only to appear in the next ; 

 and the only exception I know to the inheritance by the 

 children of the morbid weaknesses and predispositions of 

 their parents' organs and tissues, is to be found in cases 

 where strains of weakness or disease in one parent are 

 neutralised by the excessive vigour and robustness of the 

 other. The laws of Nature are inexorable, and must be 

 obeyed ; yet conservative as she is in all her operations, she 

 preserves the characteristics of the race and family by 

 differentiating, within certain definite limits the individuals 

 composing each, so that notwithstanding this individual 

 differentiation, the race and family are perpetuated by 

 heredity, and thus in a general, as in a particular sense, 

 children resemble their parents, organically and dynamically? 

 in their constitutions, functions, and every attribute. 



Whilst admitting that we are as yet unacquainted with all 

 the phenomena of disease that are transmitted by heredity, 

 those maladies or general morbid conditions generally con- 

 sidered to be, and admitted as hereditary, may be tabulated 

 as follows : 



I Gout, rheumatism, diabetes, scrofula, 

 tuberculosis, cancer, rickets, and 

 syphilis. 



I Epilepsy, chorea, insanity, hypo- 

 chondriasis, neuralgia, apoplexy, 

 paralysis. 



