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nature in which it shows itself distinctly. It is somehow 

 made a disease-aptitude again." Sir James Paget says : 

 " Through such dilutions and such tendencies towards re- 

 covery of health in embryo-life, and in a less degree after 

 birth, we may believe that many of the lesser constitutional 

 diseases are derived ; but of the rate of diminution in trans- 

 mission, and of the possible changes of form associated with 

 changes of intensity or quantity of disease, we know very 

 little, if anything. And very little we know of the results 

 of the transmission of more than one constitutional disease 

 to the same offspring. We can often see plainly that the 

 forms in which different persons display a constitutional 

 disease appear very different from those seen in their parents. 

 Thus, in a family of which one or both parents had typical 

 gout, or tuberculosis, or scrofula, there may appear any num- 

 ber of the lesser forms of these diseases, or of the forms 

 deviating furthest from the type. And yet a certain general 

 similarity may appear in all the local manifestations of each 

 constitutional disease thus variously transmitted. They may 

 be unlike in structural appearance while affecting different 

 structures, and yet they may be like in their time-work, or in 

 the production of some characteristic morbid product, or in 

 the influence which medicines or diets exercise on them. 

 These things may prove the same constitutional origin in 

 apparently very different local diseases." This long digres- 

 sion may, I trust, be excused, as I had omitted to refer par- 

 ticularly to those neutralisations or checks to inheritance 

 which frequently result from favourable inter-marriages ; 

 but it will be seen that these neutralisations or checks 

 however they may be perpetuated in theory are in 

 the majority of instances nothing more than examples of 

 atavism, and that the original disease-tendency is transmitted 



