Hereditary descent : its laws and facts, illustrated and applied to the improvement of mankind : with hints to woman; including directions for forming matrimonial alliances so as to produce, in offspring, whatever physical, mental, or moral qualities may be desired : together with preventives of hereditary tendencies / by O.S. Fowler.

  • Orson S. Fowler
Date:
1843
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Hereditary descent : its laws and facts, illustrated and applied to the improvement of mankind : with hints to woman; including directions for forming matrimonial alliances so as to produce, in offspring, whatever physical, mental, or moral qualities may be desired : together with preventives of hereditary tendencies / by O.S. Fowler. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

    7/280
    PREFACE. Though the sun of science has dawned, and is now shining with full effulgence, upon Geology, Agriculture, Chemistry, Botany, Conchology, Natural History, Physiology, Anthropology, &c., enlightening what was before obscured, dispelling the clouds of ignorance and superstition, improving mechanics and the arts, and shedding on man a flood of happiness, both in their acquisi- tion and a])plicatlon, yet a sister science, and that the most inter- esting and important of the group ; that of parentage, and the means of thereby improvins; the race, remains enshrouded in Egyptian darkness. How long shall this darkness be tolerated, «nd even fostered ? How long shall man continue his researches and discoveries in mechanics, agriculture, the arts and sciences, Sz-c. See, and yet leave this by far the richest field of philosophy and human improvement wholly unoccupied, or entered only after it has been overrun with noxious weeds and briers, which no amount of labor can more than partially subdue ? So far as re- gards the intellectual and moral improvement of mankind, by investigating and applying the laws of hereditary descent, an almost total nonentity exists. Combe, in his Constitution of Man, has presented this subject, and urged its importance, yet lie has given us but a glimpse merely of the laws which govern this department of nature, and omitted all specific directions for applying them to the production of desired qualities in offspring. But has not the time now fully come for collecting and dissemi- nating light on this subject ? Has not its application, by the farmer, to the improvement of his slock, forced home and gen$- ralized the conviction that it can be employed so as to produce, in man, personal beauty, physical health and strength, and high intellectual and moral attainments, &c. &c., and that with as