HEREDITY IN PHYSIOLOGY, IN MEDICINE, ETC. 355 



Homer's valiant warriors invoked the name of their 

 fathers and forefathers and the noble blood they inherited. 

 It was a high instinct, and men who have good claims to 

 boast of their ancestors will always have the better chance 

 to deserve the gratitude of their posterity too. In fact, 

 the phenomena of heredity justify the belief that parents, 

 endowed with bodily and mental excellence, are in the best 

 conditions for procreating descendants who shall be like 

 them. 



What measures, then, should be resorted to to make 

 sure of fortunate alliances able to originate children dis- 

 tinguished in physical and moral respects ? The delicacy 

 of this question may be readily seen, and we can answer it 

 here only in a very general way, relying particularly on an 

 original essay, yet unpublished, by our distinguished sur- 

 geon, S6dillot, who devotes the leisure of his honored re- 

 tirement to studies on the means of improving the race. 

 S^dillot begins with the suggestion that very good infor- 

 mation as to an individual's quality may be gained by con- 

 sulting his genealogy the history of his forefathers for 

 four or five generations, examined from the point of view 

 of intelligence, morality, vigor, health, longevity, social 

 position, contains potentially a part of his own historj'. 

 An examination of the head may also give hints of the 

 greatest value. It was settled long before Gall's time, 

 and it continues settled, apart from Gall's exaggerations, 

 that the shape of the head betrays to some extent the de- 

 gree of mental worth in the man. From the remotest 

 antiquity popular good sense had noticed the relation ex- 

 isting between a very large head and eminent abilities, 

 and language is full of expressions witnessing to the 

 reality of that relation. Pericles of old excited the won- 

 der of the Athenians on account of the extraordinary size 

 of his head. Cromwell, Descartes, Leibnitz, Voltaire, By- 

 ron, Goethe, Talleyrand, Napoleon, Cuvier, etc., had very 



