and that this predisposition of tissue, cell or membrane, 

 unless neutralised or held in check by marriage into a 

 different stock, will inevitably reveal itself, and if not in one 

 generation, it will assuredly in the next; for as Dr. Maudsley 

 says : " A disease-tendency, which is latent or dormant at 

 one period of life, or throughout the whole life of the 

 individual, may undergo actual development at a particular 

 physiological epoch, or on occasion of a great bodily crisis 

 from some other cause ; and a tendency which is latent or 

 dormant in one generation may show itself in the next gener- 

 ation." Nothing in nature is lost, and whether for weal or 

 woe to the individual, her laws are inexorable, and must be 

 obeyed. Heredity is the law as affecting the characters of 

 the species ; whilst the individuals are subject also to that of 

 variability, thus necessitating the differentiation of indi- 

 viduals. On the whole, however, we inherit from our 

 ancestors and parents not only our bodies and our minds, 

 but a predisposition to their diseases ; and of the latter none 

 more surely than those of the respiratory system. For 

 of the diseases of the respiratory organs, nearly all have their 

 source and origin in the scrofulous and catarrhal diatheses, 

 and these in themselves the result of inheritance in past 

 ages have been handed down to us, modified or intensified 

 as the case may be, by our fathers. 



Diseases of the Kidneys, etc. That a predisposition to 

 diseases of the kidneys, bladder, and generative organs, is 

 hereditarily transmitted, and characterises certain families 

 for generations, is a fact which cannot be denied ; and if 

 my arguments as to the influence of heredity in the diseases 

 of the circulatory, nervous, and respiratory systems are of 

 any avail, we shall have no difficulty in understanding why 

 this is and must be so. For the human body being subject 



