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tional vice itself, than of its manifestation, as being subject 

 to inheritance." By the general law of heredity is therefore 

 meant, that the most essential qualities of the parents are 

 transmitted to their children, unless neutralised by other 

 internal or external influences, and this law affects alike the 

 domain of physiology and of pathology. Children resemble 

 their parents, not however, " as stiff copies of equally rigid 

 prototypes, but as variable magnitudes whose variations 

 obey the same type." From this it will be seen that it is the 

 entire physical life which is reproduced the constitutions 

 of the parents, with all their natural changes, which are 

 generally transmitted : and so, even as a normal constitution 

 is transmitted, is a constitutional vice repeated in the 

 offspring. 1 



I shall now consider some of these general disorders of 

 nutrition with regard to their inheritance. 



Anosmia Different persons have relatively unequal 

 quantities of blood, and different persons are differentiated 

 still further from each other by relative differences in the 

 state of physical nutrition. Healthy constitutions may, 

 therefore, be divided into those which are rich in blood 

 or vigorous, and those which are spanaemic or feeble, 

 according to these two sets of phenomena. When it is 

 remembered that an individual constitution is the result of 

 heredity, and the influences of his environment during 

 fcetal and extra-uterine existence, it will readily be con- 

 ceded that certain forms or types of weakly, feeble consti- 

 tutions, which so frequently develop pathological anaemia, 

 are often inherited from either or both parents. The fact 

 of whole families being characterised by a predisposition 

 to anaemia in its many forms is proof enough. How 

 1 Ziemssen. 



