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indeed, should we be able to witness the realisation of the 

 ideal law of heredity ! The fact is that variability or atavism, 

 however mysteriously, pre-determines which children shall 

 be affected, and in what degree, or whether, whilst they 

 themselves may entirely escape, they may have the inherited 

 predisposition enshrined within them, inoperative, ineffective, 

 and inactive, so that they, in turn, may transmit it to their 

 children, and their children's children. May I also ask, how 

 came one member of the family, alluded to by Garrod, to 

 be suffering from the disease ? Did he inherit or acquire it ? 

 If the former, he will undoubtedly pass on a predisposition 

 to it more or less ; if the latter, he may also transmit it, 

 even in an aggravated form. Heredity works in larger 

 cycles than we are apt to give it credit for ; for beyond the 

 parents and their children are their ancestors and their 

 descendants for many generations, and even as the past 

 slumbers in each one of us, so do the sanitary welfare and 

 happiness of our children's children in the future, for 

 heredity governs all, and its force is never lost. 



When alluding to the rachitic diathesis, in an earlier 

 portion of these papers, I said that authorities were divided 

 as to whether it was hereditary or not, also that the 

 majority seemed to think that it was not. At the same 

 time I admitted my belief that the general condition of 

 the health of the mother had much to do with a predis- 

 position to rickets in her children, provided her health was 

 low and poor. To this opinion I still adhere, although 

 time and circumstances impel me now to favour the views 

 of those who regard rickets as hereditary whatever may be 

 said as to the hereditariness of the diathesis. At least in 

 numerous cases of rickets, hereditary influence has been a 

 factor of great importance, especially manifesting itself in 



