HEREDITY OF DISEASES. By Myles Campbell.

Otago Witness, Issue 2493, 25 December 1901, Page 75

HEREDITY OF DISEASES. By Myles Campbell.

THE SEW LAW AT MINNESOTA. Under this law no epileptic, imbecile, feeble-minded oi chronically insane- person can marry when the woman is under the age of 45. The penalty for violating this statute is a fine, or live years' imprisonment, or both. No marriage license shall be issued to an applicant not having a certificate of good health and freedom from hereditary taint of insanity or imbecility officially signed by a reputable physician. Opponents ta the new law claim, that it cannot be made effective until all the other States enact a similar statute, x-s in doubtful cases those proposing marriage would hare but co crobs the Minnesota line and get the ceremony performed at the first cross-roads by a magistrate or clergyman. An American paper gives the following opinions on the subject : — • Dr George P. Shrady said : "I should like to see such, a law passed and enforced in all the Union. The truth is that any intelligent stockbreeder is more wisely guided by the laws of health and heredity than are most men in improving the human race." Pedigree is everything with breeders of purebred animals. The stockbreeder takes wise advantage of significant facts established by experiment and experience. Tins reminds me of the Duke approaching the champion shorthorn bull at the R.A.S.E. .show, and saying, "You are a fine fellow, and no mistake." Punch made the bull say, "And so would you, my noble lord, if your pa and ma were selected with the 'same cure as mine were. ' The Rev. Dr Parkhurst paid: "I was saying only a few days ago that I wibhec there was something in the shape of a civi service examination that had to be passec by couples intending matrimony. I hav< in the course of my life married couples tha I have always regretted having married and couples .he like ot which I wouk never marry again. Whether the la\i can wisely taku hold of this mattei somewhat question, but I wish that i could. Men and women who have a cer Uin disease ought not 1.0 be allowed t< marry. Men whose constitutional shift le&sness, is such as to make it almost abso lately certain that their children -vv lll be come a burden on chanty 01 State ough not to be allowed to marry But whil all this is true. 1 still question whethe we are far enough advanced to be abl to enact safe and judicious laws apphcabl to such cases. 1 think, at any rate, ther ought to be diffused among parties, clergy men or otherwise, a sentiment that woul Jtnake J&e# frf msm 9M<M than tiie^ ax

present in deciding on the qualißcation ir matrimony on the part of persons preiratfrig themselves to be married. The .w should also cover actual cases of tuberalosis, and every disease know» to be •ansmissible from parents to child. I 10k on this Minnesota agitation as ye.ry nportant — a movement in the right direcon. It shows the tendency of the times : ; shows that the people are thinking". It , the beginning that will open the way to till further legislation of a similar kind. f this conld be brought about, it would levate the general morals of a nation lore than all other laws. A good physical Dundation is the great thing after all. If man begins life with a vigorous, unainted inheritance — a good constitution at he start, he can withstand disease and neet every obstacle in life's long battle. Mr Goff said: "Theoretically I am in avour of It, practically I am against it, lecause I do not believe it could be carried Hit." Here we see the difficulty apprehended in :arrymg out this law in Minnesota, be:ause parties wishing to marry would only ia>ve to cross the loadline ; but in New Zealand we are an insular people, and if such a law was in force parties would -equire tp . cross the sea to get married. 3ur legislators are far in advance of Minlesota, or any other country. They have placed more "acts and laws m the statute aook than classic Greece and ancient Rome lid during the period of their existence. The question of the' transmission of insanity is of the greatest importance when considered from the hereditary standpoint. There is no disease more liable to be propagated from generation to generation than insanity — not even tuberculosis. One of the leading causes of this terrible malady of the mind is the intermarriage of relation*, which, of course, should be prevented by law. By such matrimonial alliance the existing taint in the family is intensified — especially in the direction of proclivities towards mental obliquity. The inherited predisposition to any form of disease may be derived from either or both parents, but in the latter case it is likely to be intensified by being made a. dominant character. The hereditary predisposition to disease may not be observed in a particular individual, but its: recurrence shows that the defeot feas been inherited and likewisetransmitted... In such cases, the influence of favourable sanitary conditions may have been sufficient to counteract the inherited tendency in some degree, or the absence of. ii'ritaiing- causes may have prevented its development without interfering with the potency" of its transmission to the next generation.'" Tile hereditary predisposition may thus be suspended for several generations, and. then reappear with an intensity that indicates the marked persistence of the hereditary taint even in individuals that seemed to be exempt from it. There is an interesting passage in Thackeray's "Four Georges;" Vol." ' I, ' page 4, in which he marks the reversion of George 111 to the character of an ancestor of the eighth generation, William of Luneburg, from whom he not merely inherited his blindness and insanity, but also a number of the peculiar traits of mind and some of the special aberrations of the old I>uke. Writing of Duke William, he says he was a very religious lord, and was called William the Pious by his small circle of subjects over whom he ruled till fate deprived him both of sight and reason. Sometimes in his latter days the good Duke had glimpses of mental light, when he would bid his musicians play the Psaim tunes which he loved. One thinks of his descendant 200 years afterwards, blind, old, and bereft of wits, singing Handel in Windsor Tower. Then we have well -recorded instances of close resemblances in families for many a generation. Thns the ill-fated house of Stuart was marked by a family resemblance of the most striking kind, one which the portraits of its members ever under the utmost efforts of court painters to "individualise' their subjects make startingly clear to us. But this influence is not confined to the external -man: it goes to the deepest things of the mind and character. [f the Stuarts were alike in form and feature, how much more so in that headstrong incapable nature that could learn nothing from precept or experience. The transmission of mental peculiarities referred to is not conlined' to those idiosyncrasies that are compatible with what may bs termed a healthy condition of the nervous system, but extends also to the various forms of mental disease. Among 1375 lunatics, E&quirol found 337 cases of hereditary transmission (Popular Science Monthly, November, 1873). In 50 cases of insanity examined by Maudsley, 16 were hereditary. In 73 cases given by Trelat, 43 ire represented as due to heredity. From a report made to the French Government in 1861, it appears that in 1000 cases of persons of each sex admitted into the asylums, 264 males and 266 females had inherited the disease. Of the 264 males. 128 inherited from the father. 110 from the mother, and 26- from both. Of the 266 females 100 inherited from the father, 130 from the mother, and "-6 from both. (Ribot, '•Heredity," page 131.) Dr Hammond remarks that the hereditary tendency to insanity is shown "not on>; % by the fact thai ancestors have been inside, but that insanity in the descendants iAay have resulted from hysteria, epilepsy, catalepsy, or some other general nervous affection in them f'Di&eafces of the Nervous System/ page 876). CANCER. In speaking of the heredity of cancer. Dr Paget hays:— "Let it be obseiyed, thi.» tendency to cancerous disease is mc-1 commonly derived from a parent who is not yet manifestly cancerous ; for mo&t commonly the children are bora before cancer is evident in the parent So thai, as we may say. that which is M-iil future 10 the paient is tian&mittfcd potentially to the offspring. Nay, more, the tendency which exists, in the parent may never become in him or her effective , although it may become effective iv. the ofiVprmg. for there are cases in which a grand-parent lias be«u camse-rous, and although hi* or Jjpj

children ha\e koi been so. the grandchildren have been. Let me repeat, the case oi hereditary cancer only illustrate « the common rule of the transmission of hcrcditarv properties, whether natural o; l.'orbid. " Just as the parent in the per Tec t on of maturity transmits to the offspring those conditions" in germ and rudimental substance which shall be changed into the exaex, imitation of the parent's, not only in the fulness of health, but in all the infirmities of yet future age, so also even in seeming health ma\ communicate to the materials of the offspring the rudiments ot yet future disease, and these rudiments must, in the case before Ufe, be as much modifications of natural composition as m the course of many years shall be developed or degenerate into materials that will manifest themselves in the production of cancer" ('-Surgical Pathology, page 639). (To be continued.)