3. Have you a record of cases where the children of your patients
received the effects of the disease of the parent in a manner that would
show that "acquired character or condition" is transmittible?
4. Is this true in a kind of disorder which would produce in the child a
change of structure or condition so profound as to change its character
and run it in a channel distinctly the result of the "acquirement" of
the parent?
I thought it best to go to specialists in brain and nerve disorders and
to those who had had large hospital or asylum experiences. One of these,
Dr. Henry Smith Williams, ex-medical superintendent of Randall's Island,
where the city of New York sends its imbecile and epileptic children,
and where many hundreds of these came under his care, replied that
there could be no doubt of the fact that such "acquired" characters or
conditions are transmitted. One case which he gave me, however, from his
private practice will illustrate the point most clearly. B., a healthy
man with no hereditary taint of the kind, acquired syphilis at a given
time and in a known way. Before this time he was the father of one
daughter. Several years later another daughter was born to him. The
first girl is and has always been absolutely free from any and all
taint. The other one has all the inherited marks of her father's
"acquired character" and condition, which even went the length in her
of producing the recognized change in the form of the teeth due to
this disease. Now for all practical purposes it does not matter in
the faintest degree whether that transmission was in accordance with
pangenesis or by means of a vitiated environment of the "germ plasm."
The fact is the appalling thing for the reader to face. And I give this
case only because it was one of a vast number of similar ones which came
to me in reply to my questions addressed to different practitioners and
specialists.
Among other places, I went to the head of a maternity hospital. This is
what I got there: "If Weismann or any of his followers doubts for one
second the distinct, absolute, unmistakable transmission of acquired
disease of a kind to modify 'character' both mental and physical--if
they doubt its results on humanity--they have never given even a slight
study to the hospital side of life.
"I can give you hundreds of cases where there is no escape from the proof
that the children are born with the taint of an 'acquired character'
from which they cannot free themselves. Sometimes it is shown in one
form, sometimes in another, but it is as unmistakable as the color
of the eyes or the number of the toes. To deny it is to deny all
experience. I am not a biologist and I do not undertake to explain
how it is done, but I will undertake to prove that it is done to the
satisfaction of the most sceptical. Come in this ward. There is a child
whose parents were robust, healthy, strong country folk until"--and then
followed the history of the parents who had "acquired" the "character"
which they transmitted--which had made the mental, moral and physical
cripple in the ward before me. "Now here is what they transmitted. Do
you fancy that if that half idiot should ever have children they will be
'whole'? No argument but vision is needed here. That child's condition
is the result of acquired character. Its children and its children's
children will carry the acquirement--for we are not wise enough yet to
eliminate even such as that from among active propagators of the race!
If it were possible (which, thank Heaven, is not likely) that the other
parent of this half imbecile's children would be of a sane and lofty
type there might be a modification upward again in the progeny, but even
then we would not soon lose the direct, undeniable, patent 'acquirement'
which you see here."
It was the same story from each and every practitioner. The hospital and
asylum experts, the specialists in diseases of mind or body which were
due to direct acquirement (such as drunkenness, syphilis and acquired
epilepsy), were particularly strong in their contempt for even the
theory that acquired character and condition are not transmittible. One
laughingly said: "I'll grant that if I cut off a man's leg or a few of
his fingers, his children will not be likely to be deformed because of
that operation. This is not a permeating constitutional condition, it is
a mere local mutilation. But if I were to take out a part of his brain
so as to produce ["acquired"] epilepsy upon him I believe his children
will be affected, and if he is a bad syphilitic [acquired] I know his
children will be. Mind you, I don't say exactly what they will have,
and they may not all have the same thing, but I do say that their
'germ plasm' or whatever they come from, will carry the results of the
acquired condition and character." *
*"Brown-Sequard observed that injury to the central or
peripheral nervous system (spinal cord, oblongata, peduncle,
corpora quadrigem-ina, sciatic nerve) of guinea pigs
produced epilepsy, and this condition even became
hereditary. Westphal made guinea pigs epileptic by repeated
blows on the skull, and this condition also became
hereditary."--** Manual of Human Physiology," by L. Landou,
translated with additions by W. Sterling. 1885.
Dr. L. Putzell, in his "Treatise on the Common Forms of
Functional Nervous Diseases," 1880, after describing the
methods by which Brown-Sequard produced epilepsy
traumatically in guinea pigs, says: "Brown Sequard also
made the curious observation that the young of guinea pigs
who had been made epileptic in this manner, may develop the
disease spontaneously. These experiments have been verified
by Schiff, Westphal and numerous other observers."
So I beg of you to remember that while the fact and law of heredity is
as certain as death itself, its course of action, its variability of
operation, is as the March winds. To say that the constitutions of your
children will be de* termined in great part by the condition of your
body and mind is but to utter a truism; but to say exactly how--in what
given channel this effect will flow--is not, in the present state of
biological knowledge, possible.
For the sake of illustration it is usually the part of wisdom to give
the most probable trend of a given disorder; but to assert dogmatically
that the son of a lunatic will be insane or that the daughter of a woman
of the street will live as her mother did, is quite as unsafe as to
say that a fall from a fourth-story window on to an iron door would be
certain death. You must not forget that you may, if you want to take the
chances, drop an infant out of a fourth-story window on to an iron door
with no bad results to the infant (door not heard from), for I have
known that to happen; you may sleep with a bad case of small-pox and not
take it--as I once did; you may shoot a ball into a boy's head, taking
in with it several pieces of bone, you may extract the bone and leave
the ball there and the boy appear to be as good as new afterward; you
may live all your life long with a roue and your children not be inmates
of hospital, lunatic asylum or prison. All these things have been done,
but it is not the part of wisdom to infer that for this reason either
one of them would be a safe or desirable course of action; for in
this world it behooves us to deal--when we are attempting to study
nature--with the law of probability. The accidents, the exceptions, will
take care of themselves.
Notwithstanding this fact it will not be exactly fair to me for you to
report that I say that every single one of Jane Smith's children will
have fits and fall in the fire before they are twenty-one because she or
their father is an epileptic. Perhaps one or two of those children may
die in infancy, instead, or go insane--or to Congress; one may have
hydrocephalus, and another be a moral idiot and astonish the natives
because "His parents were such upright people." One may simply have a
generally weak constitution--and another may win the American cup for
wrestling; but the chances are that confirmed epilepsy (or what not) of
the parent is going to "tell" in one form or another in the children.
What I say of epilepsy is equally true of syphilis. This latter is
so true that it can be readily told by the teeth of the children of a
seriously infected case. That will strike the average "unprofessional"
reader as impossible, yet it is well known to biologists, medical men
and many dentists, so that a great many wholly innocent people who sit
in a dentist's chair reveal more private family history than could be
drawn from them with stronger instruments than mere forceps.
I have been asked to write this paper because at the present time there
is a tendency to discredit some of the well-known and easily proven
facts of heredity, as a result of certain statements supposed to have
been made by the recent school of biologists headed by Weismann. But in
the hands of the laity much that Weismann did say is misunderstood
and misstated and much that he never said is inferred. To professional
biologists the loose inferences from Weismann's suggestions and
speculations are absurd, and to experienced medical men and experts
in the lines of practice indicated above, the arguments are beneath
discussion. It is in this particular line of practice that proof is easy
and abundant, where the "acquired" nature of the modified "character" is
readily traced and the transmission (or heredity) susceptible of proof
beyond controversy.
It is for this reason that the illustrations are all taken from
this field of investigation. If they were taken from consumption,
tuberculosis or any of the various ordinary "transmittible" disorders,
the cheerful opponent would assert (and no one could disprove if he held
to the "germ plasm" theory back far enough) that the "tendency" had
been inherent in the plasm since the days of "Adam"--that it was not
an "acquired" character or condition which was transmitted. But with
artificially produced epilepsy (either by accident or purposely as in
the cases of Brown-Sequard's guinea pigs) or in the other so frequent
and so frightful disorder mentioned above, it is a simple matter to
trace the "acquirement" as well as the transmission. But when a new
light arises in the literary or scientific world there are always many
persons ready to spring forth with the declaration that they agree with
the new point of view without first taking the precaution to ascertain
what the recent theory really is. "Oh, I agree with him, the old theory
is quite dead," greets the ear, and the placid pupils of the rising
light so warp and distort the real opinion of the master as to make of
him an absurdity. This has been markedly true of Weismann and his theory
of heredity.
In ordinary cases of scientific discussion the misconceptions of the
laity would soon adjust themselves and little or no harm would be done
meantime; but in such a problem as the present far more is involved than
appears upon the surface. The ethical and moral results--not to mention
the physical--of a reckless mistranslation or misconception of a
scientific theory of this nature cannot be readily estimated, nor can
it be confined to one generation. It is pathetic to realize that many
fairly well-educated and well-meaning people, who would protect with
their lives the children they give to the world and shield them against
all possible physical, moral or mental distortion, mutilation or
deformity, will stamp upon those children far worse mutilations and
distortions (and even physical disorders) through and because of a
half-understood version of u the new theory of heredity. Therefore
I repeat that so far as the public is concerned, so far as the
sociological features of the problem of heredity are involved, so far as
the new theory relates to conduct and to physical and mental condition
and their transmission, this controversy belongs to the laboratory--to
the how and not to the fact of hereditary transmission, as I trust the
above illustrations (which might be multiplied a thousand times) will
serve to show.