I
The first step towards the reduction of disease is, beginning at the
beginning, to provide for the health of the unborn. The error, commonly
entertained, that marriageable men and women have nothing to consider
except wealth, station, or social relationships, demands correction.
The offspring of marriage, the most precious of all fortunes, deserves
surely as much forethought as is bestowed on the offspring of the lower
animals. If the intermarriage of disease were considered in the same
light as the intermarriage of poverty, the hereditary transmission of
disease, the basis of so much misery in the world, would be at an end in
three or at most four generations.