Hereditary genius : an inquiry into its laws and consequences / by Francis Galton.

  • Francis Galton
Date:
1892
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Hereditary genius : an inquiry into its laws and consequences / by Francis Galton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    modesty, piety, good disposition, and other virtues that were lodged in that seemly presence. I listened to the motion as sent from God ; and at last, upon due prosecution, happily prevailed, enjoying the company of that meet-help for the space of forty-nine years.” The mortality of the Divines follows closely the same order in those who are mentioned in the earlier, as in the later volumes of Middleton’s collection, although the con- ditions of life must have varied in the periods to which they refer. Out of the 196, nearly half of them die between the ages of 55 and 75; one quarter die before 55, and one quarter after 75: 62 or 68 is the average age at death, in the sense that as many die before that age as after it. This is rather less than I have deduced from the other groups of eminent men treated of in this volume. Dod, the most aged of all of the Divines, lived till he was 98. Nowell and Du Moulin died between 90 and 95; and Zanchius, Beza, and Conant, between 85 and 90. The diseases that killed’ them are chiefly those due to a sedentary life, for, if we exclude the martyrs, one quarter of all the recorded cases were from the stone or strangury, between which diseases the doctors did not then satis- factorily discriminate; indeed, they murdered Bishop Wilkins by mistaking the one for the other. There are five cases of plague, and the rest consist of the following groups in pretty equal proportions, viz. fever and ague, lung disease, brain attacks, and unclassed diseases. As regards health, the constitutions of most of the Divines were remarkably bad. It is, I find, very common among scholars to have been infirm in youth, whence, partly from inaptitude to joi with other boys in their amuse- ments, and partly from unhealthy activity of the brain, they take eagerly to bookish pursuits. Speaking broadly, there are three eventualities to these young students. They die young; or they strengthen as they grow, retaiming their tastes and enabled to indulge them with sustained energy ; or they live on ina sickly way. The Divines are largely recruited from the sickly portion of these adults. There is an air of invalidism about most religious biographies, that
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