HEREDITY. 313 



a few pages back, strong evidence is often disregarded for 

 trivial reasons by those who dislike the conclusion drawn. 

 Just naming this evidence and its possible invalidity, let me 

 pass to some results of experiences recently set forth by Dr. 

 Savage, President of the Neurological Society. In an essay 

 on " Heredity and Neurosis " published in Brain, Parts 

 LXXVII, LXXVIII, 1897, he says:— "We recognise the 

 transmission of a tendency to develop gout, and we recognise 

 that the disease produced by the individual himself differs 

 little from that which may have been inherited." [That is, 

 acquired gout may be transmitted as constitutional gout.] 

 " I have seen several patients whose history I have been able 

 to examine carefully, in whom mental tricks have been, trans- 

 mitted from one generation to another." In the " musical 

 prodigies " descending from musical' parents, " there seemed 

 to be a transmission of a greatly increased aptitude or 

 tendency which is all one is contending for." " Though there 

 is, in my opinion, power to transmit acquired peculiarities, 

 yet the tendency is to transmit a predisposition." (pp.19 — 

 21.) And an authority on nervous diseases who is second to 

 none — Dr. Hughlings Jackson — takes the same view. The 

 liability to consumption shown by children of consumptive 

 parents, which no one doubts, shows us the same thing. It 

 is admitted that consumption may be produced by condi- 

 tions very unfavourable to life ; and unless it is held that the 

 disease so produced differs from the disease when inherited, 

 the conclusion must be that here, too, there is a transmission 

 of functionally-produced organic changes. This holds true 

 whether the production of tubercle is due to innate defect or 

 whether it is due to the invasion of a bacillus. For in this last 

 case the consumptive diathesis must be regarded as a state of 

 body more than usually liable to invasion by the bacillus, and 

 this is the same when acquired as when transmitted. 



§ 83. Two modified manifestations of Heredity remain to 

 be noticed. The one is the re-appearance in offspring of traits 

 not borne by the parents, but borne by the grandparents or 



