A pathological and philosophical essay on hereditary diseases, with an appendix on intermarriage and the inheritance of the tendency to moral depravities and crimes / by Julius Henry Steinau.

  • Steinau, Julius Henry.
Date:
1843
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A pathological and philosophical essay on hereditary diseases, with an appendix on intermarriage and the inheritance of the tendency to moral depravities and crimes / by Julius Henry Steinau. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

    35/72 (page 19)
    Is it absolutely necessary that diseased •parents should have diseased children? §. 13. According to all experience, this question must, deci- dedly, be answered in the negative. There exists no abso- lute necessity that the children of diseased parents should inherit the diseases from which the latter suffered: and as many children resemble neither their father nor their mother externally, and as others often shew, in their cha- racter and moral dispositions, not the least similarity to their parents, even before they have been influenced by education or other circumstances, so also it is a fact, that there are children born of unhealthy parents which are from their birth, and remain through their whole life, quite healthy5. But there is no occasion to confine ourselves to the authority of experience: we can prove, in a rational way, that the children of diseased parents are not necessarily unhealthy themselves. We have seen in the last section, that if there be only one of the parents unhealthy, the children will be healthy or unhealthy according to their resemblance to that parent who is affected with disease, or to the other: in cases therefore like this, where only one parent is unhealthy, there is surely no necessity for the child inheriting the disease, as it may bend more entirely towards the healthy parent; and even in those cases where the child resembles the diseased parent in other respects, there is no absolute necessity for its resembling this parent in the state of health also; for, not to speak of remis- sions and intermissions of diseases, it is certain that no ( ') Haller (l. c.), speaking of the causes of the hereditary diseases, says, with respect to this question : “ Difficultates hie auget, quod ejusmodi vitia et peculiares notce plerumque in foetus non transeant. Cseci fere bene videntes pueros generant, claudi et manci integros.”