xviii HORMONES AND HEREDITY 



of Acquired Conditions in Man.' The belief that this 

 paper had two years' priority over the volume of 

 Delage entitled L'Heredite appears to have arisen 

 from the fact that Adami consulted the biblio- 

 graphical list in Thomson's compilation, Heredity, 

 1908, where the date of Delage' s work is given as 

 1903. But this was the second edition, the first 

 having been published, as quoted above, in 1895, six 

 years before the paper by Adami. 



Next, with regard to the claim that Adami' s 

 views as stated in the paper to which he refers were 

 essentially the same as those brought forward by 

 myself and others many years later, we find on 

 reading the paper that its author discussed merely 

 the effect of toxins in disease upon the body-cells and 

 the germ-cells, causing in the offspring either various 

 forms of arrested and imperfect development or 

 some degree of immunity. In the latter case he 

 argues that the action of the toxin of the disease has 

 been to set up certain molecular changes, certain 

 alterations in the composition of the cell-substance, 

 so that the latter responds in a different manner when 

 again brought into contact with the toxin. Once 

 this modification in the cell-substance is produced, 

 the descendants of this cell retain the same pro- 

 perties, although not permanently. Inheritance of 

 the acquired condition has to be granted, he says, in 

 the case of the body-cells in such cases. But this is 

 not the question : inheritance in the proper sense of 

 the word means the transmission to individuals of 

 the next generation. 



On this point Adami says we must logically admit 

 the action of the toxins on the germ-cells, and the 

 individuals developed from these must, subject to the 

 law of loss already noted, have the same properties. 



