TRANSMISSION OF SYPHILIS AND TUBERCULOSIS 69 



It is, indeed, incontestable that certain acquired patho- 

 logical characters are hereditary, but the contradiction which 

 pathology is thus supposed to offer to Weismann's theory is 

 founded on a misunderstanding. It is, first of all, a remarkable 

 fact that by no means all pathological characters are hereditary, 

 so that there is no necessity for pathological featujes, as such, 

 to transmit themselves to subsequent generations. This faculty 

 of transmission is restricted to certain diseases which affect not 

 only the body, but also the germ. Take the case of syphilis, fre- 

 quently adduced by pathologists as contradicting Weismann. 

 Syphilis is a microbic disease, fundamentally affecting the blood ; 

 and it is obvious that the reproductive or germinal cells, being 

 dependent, as weU as the somatic cells, on the supply of blood, 

 are liable to the same infection by the toxic properties of the 

 microbe as the rest of the organism. It is the same with alco- 

 holism. The germ-cells are as liable as the rest of the organism 

 to an infection by the toxic properties of the alcohol circulating 

 in the blood. 



It may be urged, however, that all hereditary diseases are not 

 diseases of the blood ; that tuberculosis, for instance, and cancer 

 are hereditary, and yet not, properly speaking, affections of the 

 blood-system. It may be replied, firstly, that tuberculosis is 

 not transmissible direcdy as syphilis is, but indirectly ; that 

 is to say, a predisposition to tuberculosis is transmitted by 

 diseased parents, but the cUnical form of tuberculosis, whether 

 of the lung or the intestine, the larynx, the bones, the ganglia, 

 or the sMn, or any other part, is never transmitted. On the 

 contrary, it has been demonstrated that the children of tuber- 

 culous parents, provided they be removed at an early date from 

 their surroundings, are able to survive without ever becoming 

 tuberculous. Two remarks are therefore permissible with regard 

 to the hereditary transmission of the predisposition to tuber- 

 culosis. Firstly, that the greater predisposition to tuberculosis 

 inherited by the children of diseased parents is incontestably 



