On the transmission from parent to offspring of some forms of disease and of morbid taints and tendencies / by James Whitehead.

  • James Whitehead
Date:
1857
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the transmission from parent to offspring of some forms of disease and of morbid taints and tendencies / by James Whitehead. 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.

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    like nature, wlncli Portal lias transcribed. ]\loies mge- nerantur a stirpe generis.”1 Boerhaave lias noticed tlie subject at some length, and seems to have been cogni- zant of the fact, that peculiarities were not only con- tinued from father to son, but also that a particular trait of character, or morbid tendency, may lie dormant during one generation and reappear in the third, or subse- quently : “ Silente ssepe morbo in genitore dum ex avo derivatur in nepotem.”2 The occasional alternation here referred to, denomi- nated Atavism, is not of rare occurrence: a father, that is to say, transmits to his child the diseases, or the ten- dencies thereto, of its grandfather or great-grandfather, but from all ordinary manifestations of which, the father himself is free. The deviation sometimes consists in the supplanting of one disease by another of a different kind in alternate generations, and now and then we see instances where, from no apparent cause, the consti- tutional type becomes completely and fundamentally changed. Such seeming interruptions or occasional transformations are probably referrible to the operations of the maternal system upon that of the child within her. This subject has been referred to by Aristotle, as may be gathered from the following quotation from his article De Genercitione Animalium:—“ N atura mulieris vim plurimam liabet ad immutandum in melius vel dete- nus rationem conceptus.”3 “While we find cause,” says Dr. Holland, “ of wonder at the extraordinary transmis- sion of resemblances from parent to offspring, we must admit the equal wonder that there should ever he devia- 1 Baillon, De Calculo. 2 j)c Curandis Morbis. Aphor. 1075. 3 Mercatus, De Morb. Hered. t. ii. p. G74.