HEREDITY.* BY L. WOODRUFF, M. D., COLUMBUS, OHIO. "If we would be well born we must begin two hundred years back," is the sentiment, if not the exact words of Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, and calls attention to a natural law whereby the traits of parents as well as their mental and physical peculiarities are transmitted to their offspring. At the very threshold of the subject we are confronted by the mysterious union of mind and body, and at once the science of Metaphysics, or whatever relates to material and mental phenomena presents itself for discussion. Physiology and psychology stand in juxtaposition, and the study of ourselves, and the laws of our own intelligence assume an importance which attaches to no other departments of truth or science. "This mysterious soul which animates, and is the presiding divinity over all our actions, what is it, with all its wondrous faculties?" The mystery of the union of mind or soul and matter in the ovum at the very moment of conception, and the transmission of the mental traits and physical resemblance of one or both of the progenitors, and the belief that within certain limits it is in the power to change and improve the quality of the mind and physical character of forthcoming generations by strict observance of the laws of progeniture and heredity, involves a responsibility of the most solemn kind, which no man can possibly put away from him. Chance has no place in this discussion. Man's creation and procreation is according to fixed laws. The essential act of fecundation consists in the contact or commingling of the "sperm-cell" with the "germ-cell," and whether at the moment of conception or at the period of quickening, or at birth the embryo becomes a "living soul," and the hereditary taints and traits are at once fixed, is a question too abstruse for exact science. Read before the Columbus Academy of Medicine, January 21, 1891. Facts are abundant to illustrate the doctrine of heredity in which the features, complexion, color of hair and eyes, and faculties and disposition which predominate in the parent, are stamped upon the child from the moment its organic existence commences, and determine its future mental status and its predisposition to physical strength or weakness. If it be not disease itself that is transmitted, it is a weakness, a predisposition, or lessened power of resistance to infection, and though not the disorder itself but the prepared soil for it. The writer is moved to select this subject by some observation and information obtained at a recent visit to the "Ohio Institution for Feeble-Minded Youth," so admirably managed by Superintendent Dr. G. A. Doren. An orchestra, twenty in number, mostly girls, played the Anvil Chorus and other difficult pieces with great precision and fine effect; and on inquiring why pupils of that age-16 to 20 years and so well trained in music were kept at the institution, I was told that they have no homes, and if sent away would be without protection; and the startling fact was disclosed, that there are now in the institution pupils the offsprings of other pupils who had been there years ago. No class of diseases or defects are so certainly transmitted from parent to child as that "Bad Family," the Neuroses. "A morbid deviation from the normal average, denominated "Degeneracy" is propagated and a neurophatic constitution entailed from generation to generation. It would be tedious to name the number and varieties of nervous troubles which are certainly entailed. In seventy-five per cent. of the cases of hysteria, a disease simulating almost all other diseases, essentially a neurosis, there is a history of hysteria or some neurosis or psychosis in the parents. Dana gives the following list of the "Hereditary or Family Nervous Diseases," to wit: "Chorea, Amaurotic Idiocy, Cerebral Diplegia, Hemiplegia, Cerebellar Ataxia, Spinal Ataxia or Frederich's Disease, Ataxic Paraplegia, Spastic Spinal Paralysis involving only the lower extremities, Progressive Spinal Muscular Ataxia, Hereditary Progressive Dystrophies." Persons of great talent in affairs of great artistic genius in any direction are apt to have children with neuropathic constitutions, and distinct nervous or mental diseases are liable to be entailed. Congenital physical defects, like webbed fingers and clubfoot are entailed. Injuries or severe shock to the mother during the early months of gestation sometimes leads to nervousness in offspring. The criminally insane and eratic and eccentric persons of weak judgment have the neuropathic constitution. That criminality and a tendency to an evil life is inherited is conclusively proven by the history of "Margaret, the Mother of Criminals," who was born in the State of New York, more than one hundred years ago. She was a pauper child, left adrift on the village, never educated and the subject of out-door relief. She became the mother of a long race of criminals and paupers, which has cursed the country ever since. Two hundred of her decendants have been criminals. In one generation there were twenty children, of whom seventeen lived to maturity; nine served terms aggregating fifty years in the state prison for high crimes, and all the others were frequent inmates of jails and almshouses. It is said that of the six hundred and twenty-three decendants of this outcast girl two hundred committed crimes which brought them upon the court records, and most of the others were idiots, drunkards, lunatics, paupers or prostitutes. The costs to the country of this race of criminals and paupers is estimated at $100,000 taking no account of the damages they inflicted upon others." Heredity is the most potent etiologic factor in the development of insanity, and the only practical restrictive measure is, namely, abstinance from marriage and procreation on the part of those who have been insane or are descended from insane progenitors. Dangerous possibilities always surround alcoholic subjects. Drunkenness and the use of narcotic drugs are the principal physical causes of the neurotic constitution, and sexual congress leading to conception, while one or both parties are intoxicated results in idiocy of offspring. Two of the saddest cases of idiocy falling under the observation of the writer, were children whose fathers were sots and the mothers viragoes. The habitual use of alcohol induces degenerative changes in the entire nervous system which are permanent and progressive and modifies the intellectual faculties of both parent and offspring. "During ten years after removal of the spirit duty in Norway, in 1825, there was a marked increase of intemperance among the people, and an increase of one hundred and fifty per cent. in the production of congenital idiots." In a paper read by Dr. T. J. Happel, of Tenn., before the meeting of American Medical Association at Atlantic City, in June, 1900, he says: "In the family of a morphine-eating, whisky-drinking physician, I have seen one son die a perfect wreck from the use of both these drugs, and another son worse than dead, a vagabond upon the face of the earth." Hereditary or inherited syphilis is the bane of thousands of lives. In a given case of degeneracy, if we search for it, we find the fundamental causes to be syphilis somewhere among the ancestors of the family of the degenerate. The syphilitic taint is emphasized by deafness, cicatrices in the pharynx, chronic periostitis of the tibia, indurated glands, headaches, cranial nerve palsies, hemiplegia, epilepsy, mental disorders and paraplegia. "The dwarfed stature, the coarse flabby skin, the sunken nasal bridge, the scars at the angle of the mouth and the alae of the nose, the malformed permanent teeth, the vertically notched teeth (Hutchinson's teeth) indeliby stamp the inheritance of the patient. Hutchinson originally pointed out that interstitial keratitis, in a majority of cases, is due to inherited syphilis. Nettleship found "personal evidences in fifty-four (54) per cent. of his cases, and evidence in the family history in fourteen (14) per cent. more; total sixty-eight (68) per cent; and in most of the remaining (32 per cent.) there have been strong reasons to suspect it." Saemish gives the inherited cases as 62 per cent.; Horner, 62 per cent.; Michel, 50 per cent., and Hirschberg, 61 per cent. The ravages of this disease, I am sorry to say, are found in all classes of people, and in many instances in the families of the wealthy and cultured, so that environment has no part in its causation. Prof. Angelo Mosso says: "Destiny loads each one of us with a fatal inheritance. * * * What we call instinct is the voice of past generations reverbrating like a distant echo in the cells of the nervous system." What the remedy? Dr. W. Duncan McKim, in his book on "Heredity and Human Progress," suggests "the gentle removal from this life of such idiotic, imbecile and otherwise grossly. defective persons as are now dependent upon the state, and of such criminals as commit the most henious crimes, or show by the frequent repetition of crimes less grave, by their bodily and mental characters, and by their ancestry, that they are hopelessly incorrigible." This would be a revival of barbarity practiced a hundred years ago, when there were over two hundred crimes punishable by death. If the power of the law could be invoked, the enforced prohibition of marriage of the defective classes, or possibly the destruction by surgical operation of the physiological power to procreate, would largely diminish the number of such defectives. A sweeping measure would be a legislative enactment requiring all persons contemplating marriage to submit to examination by a board of physicians who should certify as to their mental and physical fitness. Serenity of mind of the mother during gestation will have much to do with the disposition and mental qualities of the babe and ultimately influence the future man. The observance of laws, benevolent and wise in themselves, and calculated to promote the welfare of the human family, will go far toward remedying the evils and defects referred to in this paper. But who shall solve this problem; who shall decide the great questions involved in the highest interest and wants of our race? 2805 West Broad St. BIBLIOGRAPHY. 1. Dana: Text Book of Nervous Diseases. 3. Ranney: Nervous Diseases. 4. 5. 6. Sachs: Nervous Diseases of Children. 7. Hirt: Diseases of Nervous System. 8. Sajous: Annual of Practical Medicine. 9. Philadelphia Medical Journal. 10. 11. Journal of the American Medical Association. |