TRANSMISSION OF ACQUIRED DIATHESIS 157 



nexion with the subject, Gheorghiu, studying malformations, 

 has pointed out the remarkable frequency with which there is, 

 on inquiry, obtained a history not merely of the mother, but of 

 either father or mother having been a sufferer from acute or 

 chronic infectious disease at the time of conception. 1 



3. The Direct Transmission of Acquired Constitutional 

 States. — In the above-mentioned series of phenomena we have 

 dealt, as I say, not with the direct transmission of acquired 

 conditions, but with the deleterious influence leading to general 

 defects of development and due to the action of toxic agents 

 upon germ cells prior to conception. Can we advance further 

 and see evidences of direct transmission of acquired constitutional 

 states ? I think we can. 



If, for example, an animal acquires immunity to a disease, 

 we are convinced that the process of acquirement is a chemical 

 process ; that the action of the toxine of the disease has been 

 to set up certain molecular changes, certain alterations in the 

 composition of the cell substance, so that that cell substance now 

 responds in a different manner when brought into contact with 

 the toxine, and once this modification in the cell substance is 

 produced, the descendants of this cell retain the same properties ; 

 that immunity to one special disease is not merely a momentary, 

 but is a more or less lasting state of the system. It is true 

 that it tends not to be permanent ; we see that, where it is 

 attainable, the more prolonged and the more severe the changes 

 set up in the process of immunization, the longer it lasts ; we 

 recognize, further, the action of the law that properties of most 

 recent acquirement are soonest lost, and that there is a distinct 

 tendency for the condition, or acquired state, of the cells to pass 

 away. Nevertheless we admit that inheritance of the acquired 

 condition has to be granted in the case of the body cells in this 

 connexion. Here, again, if these processes obtain in connexion 

 with the body cells, we must logically admit their action in the 

 case of the germ cells. The idioplasm of body and germ cell is 

 of like origin, and must be susceptible to like influences. 



there has been manifested a tendency to regard all the lesions of so-called con- 

 genital syphilis as actually of infective nature, due to the transmission of the 

 Treponema, or Spirochaete from the mother to her offspring. This has not 

 been proved, and, for myself, I still believe in the existence of certain inherited 

 parasyphilitic non-infective conditions.] 



1 Gheorghiu, L'Obstitrigue, January 1900, p. 63. 



