248 HEREDITY IN RELATION TO EUGENICS 



So albinism varies much in degree and certain families are 

 recognized as containing partial albinos; others, neai'ly com- 

 plete albinos; still others, complete albinos. 



Pathologies describe some diseases as common, others 

 as rare; yet, within limits, this must depend on the geo- 

 graphical location of the author. At the east end of Long 

 Island Huntington's chorea is not a rare disease as it seems 

 to be in Eastern Massachusetts. Deaf mutism was found 

 in 4 per cent of the population of Chilmark, in 1880, and 

 the practitioner of that place would gain an impression of 

 its frequency which would differ from that of a hospital 

 surgeon in New York City. Hospital surgeons in great 

 cities believe they get a better average view because they 

 get random samples out of a great mixture; but in just so^ 

 far they lose sight of the essential feature of the specificity 

 of the different strains of human germ plasm and too often 

 gain the impression that the sporadic examples of a disease 

 that come to their hands prove the purely accidental nature 

 of its incidence. The metropolitan hospital with its random 

 sampling is the last place to get a proper idea of the relation 

 of disease to germ plasm. It is the venerable country doc- 

 tor in a long settled and stable community who can tell 

 tales of hereditary tendencies. 



It was stated above that cooperation in putting on 

 record one's family history should be regarded as a patriotic 

 duty. I might go further and say that, just as the traits 

 of criminals and defectives go on pubhc or semi-public rec- 

 ords, with even more reason a record should be kept of 

 our best families and of their traits. Enlightened com- 

 munities preserve records of births, marriages and deaths 

 and of various business transactions, especially in land. 

 It is not less important to keep a record of innate capacities 

 and valuable traits. For it is not too much to say that the 

 future of our nation depends on the perpetuation by repro- 



