AND ENVIRONMENT 



19 



None of these hypotheses made any striking difference 

 in the correlations. They are all given below in Table IX. 

 Now these results are most instructive. They show 

 first that a parent — even the father — is twice as dan- 

 gerous to the offspring, if the source be infection, as 

 the husband to the wife. They show further that, if 

 we include only persons over 14 or 23, the wife is not 

 more dangerous to the offspring than the husband. 

 They have both equal influence. And yet, as the wife 



TABLE IX. 



RESEMBLANCE OF PARENT AND OFFSPRING 

 FOR PHTHISIS. Goring. 



is closer to the husband than the father to his chil- 

 dren over 23, and the mother to her children than 

 the father, the sole influence of this superior infection 

 occurs when we include children under 14! The 

 father is twice as dangerous to the child as the hus- 

 band to the wife ! The mother is only very slightly 

 more dangerous than the father at very early ages! 

 It seems to me that we have run up against a stone 

 wall of fact which no theory of infection can batter down ! 

 If the main factor be infection why should the father 

 and mother be equally influential with their children, 

 and why should the father be twice as influential as the 

 husband ? I cannot get over this wall of fact. It has 



B 2 



