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smell, and taste, every degree of development, whether 

 anaesthetic or hypersesthetic, is alike transmissible, and that 

 wherever these latter abnormalities become developed to a 

 morbid degree, here also heredity is the rule. In a word 

 the sensorial organs, their functions and their diseases, are 

 alike subject to the law of heredity. 



Diseases of the Skin. Anatomically and physiologically 

 there can be no question as to the heritability of certain 

 peculiarities of skin, some of which are, more or less, 

 predisposed to certain morbid dermatological conditions. 

 Some of the recorded cases of physiological and anatomical 

 abnormalities of the skin are very interesting, and all the 

 more so from the fact of their having been transmitted through 

 many generations. The well-known case of the Lambert 

 family is peculiarly interesting, as affording indisputable 

 evidence of the transmissibility of an abnormal condition of 

 the skin, which descended through at least five generations. 

 The peculiar affection from which the family suffered 

 consisted in their skin being covered with indurated, horn- 

 like excrescences, affecting the entire body, except the head, 

 soles of the feet, and palms of the hands. Edward Lambert, 

 one of the earliest, if not the first member of the family so 

 affected, had six children, only one of whom ultimately 

 survived ; but each of them had manifested the same 

 peculiarity when six weeks old. The surviving son married, 

 and all his male offspring were similarly affected, this 

 extraordinary cutaneous condition having descended through 

 at least five generations. Corns, and the indurated brawny 

 cuticle of the feet in those who walk bare : footed, present a 

 somewhat analogous condition of skin. 



Another striking instance of the transmissibility of 

 abnormal physiological phenomena is presented by the case 



