1 98 Medicine : 



As bad as it well can be, I should say. Or of 

 a diabetic and a phthisical constitution ? What 

 is the constitutional disposition, if any, most 

 likely in breeding to cancel a tendency to can- 

 cer? For eager as the search is for a cancer- 

 ous microbe, one may doubt whether it has yet 

 been tracked to its late-suspected lair in the 

 nucleus of the cell. Having regard to the local 

 invasions and distributions of cancer, its provoca- 

 tion by local irritation, its more than accidental 

 heredity, and its quiet settlement in the system 

 without feverish tumult, for all the world as if it 

 felt itself no alien intruder but constitutionally at 

 home there, it seems probable that its unruly 

 proliferation of cells, however provoked, betrays 

 the awakening to activity of the silent memories, 

 of protoplasmic germinal growth. How best mate 

 the person having a native tendency to insanity 

 so as to cancel it in the progeny, or, better still, 

 convert it into a good evolutional variation ? For 

 that is what happens sometimes, one child of a 

 neuropathic family dying in a lunatic asylum^ 

 while another rises to eminence as poet, painter, 

 orator — great man of some kind. Why and under 

 what conditions is the epilepsy of one generation 

 transformed into the insanity of the next genera- 

 tion ? How is it that diabetes and insanity go 

 along together in some families, or alternate in 

 them through generations ? When medical science 

 can answer these and like questions it may then 

 dictate some wise eugenic rules. Meanwhile, in 



