HEREDITARY TAINTS.

Rodney and Otamatea Times, Waitemata and Kaipara Gazette, 21 August 1912, Page 7

HEREDITARY TAINTS.

The clearing of. the mental vision and the gradual comprehension of the great and potential fact of heredity is one of the results of the labours of physiologists. "The sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the children," said Moses more than three thousand years ago. Probably he comprehended in but a very small degree the significance of his cwn utterances. Not only do parents transmit to children their mental peculiarities, their moral tendencies, the features of the face, the stoop of the shoulders, and the tricks of the gait, but they pass on to them their blood, their brain, their glands, their very life and soul. The parent himself, as is well known, can modify and make worse or better both his constitution and his character. Similarly the child's constitution and character may be changed until, by the operation of the law of heredity itself, a not very remote descendant may be the antipodes of his early progenitors. The discovery of an existinginherited taint of disease or of vice iii a child is not a cause for regret,1 but for thankfulness. The disease taint is, of course, -flo be deplored, and so is the inherited vice; but its early discovery is to be hailed with gratitude as pointing out lines of physical and moral treatment which may lead to the practical enfeeblement of the tain>, or even to its eradication.