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 Heinrich.
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 The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    in vain. The second brother, fearing the same fate, began, long before the fatal period, to use all possible pre- ventive means, but without effect. At the said period his little finger became bent, like that of his father and his brotherl. §. 10. According to the judgment of the most acute observers, we find, besides these deformities in the bones and mus- cles, that manv diseases and morbid affections of the teeth and the hair are hereditary. There are whole families characterized by exceedingly strong and healthy teeth, which they preserve through their whole life; whilst in others no precaution can prevent the decay and early loss of them. There have also existed families, and some are still living, whose members became mostly (and that through many generations), at a certain and gene- rally very early period of their life, bald-headed, however beautiful a head of hair they may have had before. In other families again we notice all the members becoming in the same way very early grey-headed; and this early canities has justly been reckoned by many authors among hereditary complaints. Morbid affections and anomalies which have their seat in the cutis, as warts, callosities (i. e. clavi), and corneous excrescences, have, in not a few instances, been observed as hereditary. The charac- ter of the cutis itself is decidedly hereditary; such as, a more strong and dry condition of it, with narrow pores; or a more tender, slackened one, with enlarged pores, which disposes to abundant perspirations. Also the dis- position to abnormal sweatings of the feet is hereditary, (') Dr. Little, who successfully presides at the Orthopaedic Institu- tion in London, very often observes the most remarkable instances of hereditary deformities in that Institution, as well as in his private practice, in this branch of our science.
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