HEREDITY IN PHYSIOLOGY, IN MEDICINE, ETC. 355 
Homer’s valiant warriors invoked the name of their 
fathers and forefathers and the noble blood they inherited. 
it was a high instinct, and men who have good claims to 
boast of their ancestors will always have the better chance 
to deserve the gratitude of their posterity too. In fact, 
the phenomena of heredity justify the belief that parents, 
endowed with bodily and mental excellence, are in the best 
conditions for procreating descendants who shall be like 
them. 
What measures, then, should be resorted to to make 
sure of fortunate alliances able to originate children dis- 
tinguished in physical and moral respects? The delicacy 
of this question may be readily seen, and we can answer it 
here only in a very general way, relying particularly on an 
original essay, yet unpublished, by our distinguished sur- 
geon, Sédillot, who devotes the leisure of his honored re- - 
tirement to studies on the means of improving the race. 
Sédillot begins with the suggestion that very good infor- 
mation as to an individual’s quality may be gained by con- 
sulting his genealogy-—the history of his forefathers for 
four or five generations, examined from the point of view 
of intelligence, morality, vigor, health, longevity, social 
position, contains potentially a part of his own history. 
An examination of the head may also give hints of the 
greatest value. It was settled long before Gall’s time, 
and it continues settled, apart from Gall’s exaggerations, 
that the shape of the head betrays to some extent the de- 
gree of mental worth in the man. From the remotest 
antiquity popular good sense had noticed the relation ex- 
isting between a very large head and eminent abilities, 
and language is full of expressions witnessing to the 
reality of that relation. Pericles of old excited the won- 
der of the Athenians on account of the extraordinary size 
of his head. Cromwell, Descartes, Leibnitz, Voltaire, By- 
ron, Goethe, Talleyrand, Napoleon, Cuvier, etc., had very 
