90 
GEORGE H. BAILEY. 
tion should be no contra-indication, for in all reported cases, the 
extension of tuberculosis to the “ seminal vesicles,” impotence 
always occurs shortly as a sequel to this form of the disease. 
Shakespeare has said, “ Diseases desperate grown, by desper¬ 
ate appliances are relieved, or not at all.” We cannot take our 
consumptive cows to “ Poland Springs ” summers, or to Florida 
or some alpine regions winters, for “ their health,” and if we did 
we should not send the bulls along with them to propagate that 
kind of stock. The real decrease of tuberculosis, and other ills 
that constitute the sad inheritance of humanity will come, when 
persons of phthisical type are sufficiently educated to realize 
that they ought not to marry. Your profession have amoral re¬ 
sponsibility to perform that^does not attach to mine, and I hope 
to live to see the day when you will possess a legal responsibility 
to forbid all such unholy alliances ; and when the heart and hand 
of any fair and healthy woman is sought by some “ consumptive 
dude,” she may reply instead of “ask my papa,” “ask my 
physician,” when no reputable or conscientious practitioner 
would ever consign her to such a living Siberia as that. It is 
said that marriages are made in heaven, but if his Satanic 
majesty does not prove to be the grand promoter and boomer of 
such alliances, I shall lose all my faith in the good book which 
says, “ the iniquities of the father shall be visited upon their 
children to the third and fourth generation.” 
Sir Thomas Watson, M. D., wrote a quarter of a century 
ago : “It would be well for the laity if the multiplication and 
diffusion of the strumous diathesis could be checked by a pru¬ 
dent avoidance of ill-sorted marriages. It is very desirable that 
correct notions on these subjects should be generally prevalent ; 
and that persons who are conscious that scrofula in any of its 
shapes exists in their family and a fortiori they who know that 
it exists in their own corporal frame should avoid marriage, and 
the prudence might be enforced if they could be made to fore¬ 
see the suffering and misery its neglect is calculated to inflict 
upon their offspring. But on these points our advice is seldom 
asked.” 
