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148 HEREDITY IN RELATION TO EUGENICS 



at 35 years or over have died of cancer or tumor or have 

 been operated on for cancer (4 cases in all) and two others 

 have been operated on by a cancer surgeon, but details 

 were not furnished. Two others in the family are suspected 

 of having died of the disease. Now such famiUes as these 

 are by no means rare and this is the basis for the conclu- 

 sion that there is a family Uability to cancer. 



Moreover, there is a specificity of the disease in each par- 

 ticular family. In one family non-resistance shows itself in 



the females in cancer of the breast, 

 in another, in cancer of the uterus, 

 in another in cancer of the intes- 

 r — III tine. Silcox (1892, Fig. 123) gives 

 ^ XlmV w w w ^ fragment of a pedigree showing 



that a father, four daughters and 



1 a granddaughter all probably have 



III 9 sarcoma of the eyeball; and Broca 



Fig. 123.— Fragment of a records the case of a woman and 



pedigree showing a specific in- three daughters who, at about the 



heritance of sarcoma of the ^ -^ j, 



eyebaU. All persons indicated Same age, possessed fabrous forma- 



by black symbols are similarly ^j^j^ ^j^ ^j^g breast. Considermg 

 affected. Silcox, 1892. ^ ^ ^. ^ ^ .,. 



the few pedigrees of cancer famihes 

 extant and the large number of organs subject to cancer 

 these cases of cancer in the same organ strengthen mater- 

 ially the view of specific inheritability. 



That certain ''benign" tumors are hereditary is indicated 

 by various records in the literature. Thus Atkinson cites 

 the case of a man whose body was covered with countless 

 tumors varying in size from that of a canary seed to that of a 

 pullet's egg. His sister and their father were similarly af- 

 fected. The disease is not a common one in this form and 

 this fact gives its high incidence in this family the greater 

 weight as evidence that internal conditions have at least 

 molded the form taken by the disease. 



