300 HEREDITY AND SELECTION IN SOCIOLOGY 



It is not our purpose here to examine in detail these various 

 categories. A simple enumeration of some of the symptoms 

 peculiar to each will help us to appreciate their gravity. In the 

 first category we find all those numerous cases of maxillary, 

 cranial, nasal, ocular, auricular, cerebral, medullary abnormaUties, 

 and many others, which are so often a lamentable feature of 

 hereditary syphilis. The second category embraces a consider- 

 able number of pathological cases. In this category we may 

 include the syphilitic abortive child, the stunted and atrophied 

 specimen which seldom survives long. In this category we may 

 include also the valetudinarian child, feeble, weak, sickly, pre- 

 disposed to a number of diseases, including tuberculosis. Heredi- 

 tary syphilis is one of the chief agents for preparing the groimd 

 for the reception of the tubercle bacillus ; and this role of heredi- 

 tary syphilis in predisposing to that other great social malady, 

 tuberculosis, renders the nature of the former, from the point of 

 view of the interests of the race, doubly dangerous. Further, 

 we find a general fragility of life, or, as Professor Fournier puts 

 it, a " quotient of vitality inferior to the normal quotient," 

 which has, as a very general rule, the result that the individual 

 succumbs to a malady which would certainly not cause the 

 death of a healthy patient. Infantilism and rachitism are fre- 

 quent results of hereditary syphilis. Although it is an error to 

 consider rachitism as produced solely by syphihs, it is, never- 

 theless, very frequently so produced. 



In the third category, as we have said, we find monstrosities. 

 It is now an established fact that syphilis may result in the 

 begetting of monstrosities, and there is nothing surprising in this 

 fact, seeing that monstrosity is but an extreme of abnormaUty. 

 In short, just as abnormality is a result of syphilis, so is de- 

 generacy ; or, rather, degeneracy is the natural consequence — the 

 corollary, we may say — of abnormality. The syphilitic abortive 

 child which survives but a few hours or days is a degenerate ; and 

 degenerates are also the valetudinarian, the infantile man, the 



