THE CAVENDISH LECTURE 23 



due to Franchini and Zaniasi (Fig. 9), in which both father and 

 mother were achondroplasic ; in both these cases the offspring are 

 reaching adult age, and were born by Cresarian section. Lastly, 

 here is a case due to Gueniot and Potocki (Fig. 10), showing 

 achondroplasia for three generations, in the last there being no less 

 than three Caesarian operations. Still more vividly is the matter 

 brought before us by photographs with which Professor Nijhoff 

 himself has kindly provided me. Here are two sisters (Plates II and 

 III) ; both, as you see, have already had Csesarian operations, and 

 they are taken when they were in his clinic waiting for further like 

 operations. Their fether, as we have seen in the pedigree, was 

 achondroplasic, they had achondroplasic brothers and sisters, and 

 they have at least one achondroplasic child. From the same 

 source I could show you cases of women waiting for their third 

 and fourth C^sarian sections. 



Nor is the matter confined to achondroplasia ; rickets runs 

 in families also. Here is a case of familial rickets, five in the same 

 family (Plate VI) ; and here a case of a brother and sister, the 

 latter waiting for a second C^sarian section at the hands of Pro- 

 fessor Nijhoff (Plates IV and V). Do you think that the reproduc- 

 tion of such deformities tends to racial efficiency ? Should not 

 such families at least stop at the first child ? 



What I have just indicated has a wide application to a great 

 variety of deformed and pathological conditions. Here is a 

 pedigree of split hand and foot (Fig. 11), which I put together some 

 years back. Vou will see twenty-five deformed descendants o{ one 

 woman alone. Here is a photograph of the mother and two of her 

 eight children, six of whom are affected (Plate VII). Well, what is 

 the history of this family ? They are largely tramps, many of them 

 in and out of workhouse and prison. Since that photograph was 

 taken the woman has been in gaol for cruelty to those two children, 

 and she came out to have her eighth child, her sixth deformed one. 

 In this case one woman was responsible for twenty-five deformed 

 out of seventy- five descendants. Here is a case of o?ie woman with 

 congenital cataract giving rise to thirty-nine descendants with 

 cataract (Fig. 12). Here is a case of o?ie "blind" man responsible 

 for fourteen " blind " descendants (Fig. 13). Deaf-mutism shows 

 the same sort of propagation (Fig 14), and I have endless pedigrees 

 demonstrating how " general degeneracy " runs in stocks, epilepsy, 

 insanity, alcoholism and mental defect being practically inter- 

 changeable, numberless members failing to reach normality ; as 



