A SWEDISH FARMER'S LINEAGE 



63 



other an unhealthy homozygot, we can expert that all the children will be healthy; 

 but it should be noted: all have the propensity that is to say; all are heterozy* 

 gots. Three of these children having attained mature age, emigrated to Australia, 

 and married (not to relations). Half the number of the children of these mar* 

 riages will be heterozygots. When these marry in Australia, 50 % of their 

 children will be heterozygots, and so on. Let us imagine that 2 brothers or 

 sisters, who are both heterozygots in time to come - - e. g. in a hundred years 

 or more remove with their families to a distant part of the country. Their 

 children perhaps grow up without having any neighbours; and then it is highly 

 probable that cousins marry, that is to say, new sources of the disease, appear 

 there occasioned by such marriages, which result in a fresh appearance in the 

 offspring, of myoklonus epilepsy (see generation VII in the table). 



Parents, who see such a disease break out in one of the children, are very 

 horrified. They have most likely forgotten long ago, that they originated from 

 Sweden. And they probably know nothing of the family disease in Blekinge. 

 They resort to a doctor for help and advice. The doctor asks them the reason 

 of this disease in the child. The parents would give then, as now, the first 

 local reasons, which came to hand. 



We will give as an example, what a doctor in these days, would hear from 

 the parents: A child has perhaps been out playing, on a very warm day, and 

 drunk cold water. The first attack occurs the same night. The parents think 

 that the heat, and the drinking of cold water, are the cause of the illness, and 

 tell the doctor this. Or they suggest that the child has eaten poisonous berries 

 etc., etc. The doctor, who perhaps has an inkling of the true cause, probably 

 enquires. Do you think that it may be a hereditary disease.* He gets a de* 

 cidedly negative reply as follows. We know nobody in our family who has ever 

 had the disease.* Here the matter is supposed to be settled. If it is a really 

 clever and schooled physician, he is in a position to inform them, that medical 

 science has discovered long ago, that the disease is decidedly hereditary, although 

 it has only appeared in solitary cases, that is to say, in a certain percentage 

 amongst children, if both the parents have a propensity for the disease, otherwise 

 only the propensity is inherited. Now if the parents are in a low state of 

 culture, the doctor cannot convince them of this, at least not as a rule, in 

 these days. 



They retain their idea of the importance of local causes, and think the doctor 

 does not know his business. They resort to a quack*doctor, who has, as they 

 think, a better knowledge of the disease in question. This is the usual idea 

 amongst ignorant and unintelligent people. 



The Lister family was at its best, during the latter half of the 18th century. 

 They were far above other families in the district in question. 



The members were called the great*, several of them were elected to Parlia 

 ment as already stated, and one of them played an important part in the Farmers 

 Party* during the end of the 18th century. They deteriorated, however, in the 

 beginning of the 19th century, when they distilled their own alcohol, and thus 



