Is Consumption Hereditary?

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 2293, 5 January 1900, Page 3

Is Consumption Hereditary?

There is no doctrine more firmly impressed on the mind of the average director of a life assurance company than the hereditary transmission of consumption. Yet, like other cherished beliefs this doctrine is being attacked on all sides, and if it is to remain as one of the fundamental principles of life assurance, fresh statistics must, the " British MedicalJournai " thinks, be colleck-u as to confute the statements ■confidently madefy i : '* opponents. The discovery of the tubercle b*iV n .ua and e.i. ptirmation of the infectious nature oi consumption has thrown quite a new iight on some of the questions connected with the transmission of this disease. Dr. T. 0. Edwards has treated this question with much force and lucidity in a paper entitled, 41 Pacts, not Theories, in regard to Consumption from an Insurance Standpoint." He says emphatically : " It is more important to enquire strictly into the environment and personal condition of the applicant than it is to reject or accept wholly the now believed false theory of heredity and predisposition, remembering that there is no tangible evidence of heredity, and that predisposition is environment and proximity to the risks of personal infection."