Nature and nurture, the problem of the future : a presidential address delivered by Karl Pearson at the annual meeting of the Social and Political Education League, April 28, 1910.

  • Karl Pearson
Date:
1910
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: Nature and nurture, the problem of the future : a presidential address delivered by Karl Pearson at the annual meeting of the Social and Political Education League, April 28, 1910. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    can be traced, twenty were already, on going to school at seven, found to be of feeble sight, several were operated on before twelve years of age, and some lost the sight of one or both eyes. From that one case we find two, four, thirteen, twenty blind or semi-blind individuals in four successive generations. Forty defective individuals in a stock still multiplying, which nature, left to herself, would have cut off at its very inception ! But civilized man provided an environment wherein they could survive, marry, and multiply. In the last generation the nine families of which we have records are still incomplete, and yet they average five children apiece—a number much above the average incomplete family of the healthy and fit population. See Plate I, Fig. i. But congenital cataract was associated in this case with fairly good physique; it not infrequently occurs associated with other degeneracies. My second pedigree 1 shows you a history of mental disease:— Ancestry of mental disease, consanguinity, with physical defect in fourth generation, and cataract of form not stated. I. i, male, died mad ; I. 2, his brother, had religious mania ; I. 1 had two female children, one normal, the other died of a nervous disease, these produce the parents of the third generation. II. 1-8, a sibship of eight, of whom two males were epileptic, two females hysterical, two females tubercular, one female a religious maniac, and one male described as idiotic ; he marries the normal daughter, II. 9, of 1. 1 and has several defective children. II. 10, the other daughter of I. 1 bears to II. 11, an ‘ eccentric 5 man, three children, of whom some are defective ; she then dies of some nervous disease. III. 1-4, sibship of idiot father (II. 8) and normal mother (II. 9). III. 1, male, tubercular. III. 2 and 3, females, religious maniacs. III. 4, normal male, who marries III. 5, his maternal first cousin, and begets six children, of whom
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