Consanguinity in marriage / by E.S. McKee.

  • McKee, Edward S.
Date:
[1886?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Consanguinity in marriage / by E.S. McKee. 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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    Brown, Smith and Smith, probably means the marriage of distant relatives, though the parties themselves are not aware of it. Dr. Bemis reported to the American Medical Association a collection of 843 consanguineous marriages, producing 3,942 children, 4.6 births per marriage; 28.7 per cent, are put down as defective; 3.6 per cent, as deaf-mutes; 2.1 per cent, as blind; 7 per cent, as idiots; 2.04 per cent, as insane; 1.5 per cent, as epileptic; 7.6 per cent, as scrofulous, and 2.4 per cent, as deformed; 22.4 per cent, are recorded as having died young. M. Burgeois gives the history of his own fam- ily, descended from a consanguineous union in the seventeenth century. Sixty-eight marriages all feel the effects of consanguinity, yet only one was infertile, and this the fault of the wife, a woman of alien stock. The health of all the 200 descend- ants is excellent, except in one family, where scrofula has crept in. Seguin gives the particulars of ten marriages of kin in his own family, two of the number being uncle with niece, and the rest of first- cousins. Sixty-one children were born, not one of whom showed deaf-mutism, hydrocephalus, stam- mering, or polydactylism. All lived to be grown up. Dally gives a case of intermarriage between two families, all being first-cousins, save two, who were second-cousins. This has continued for five generations, with an average of three or four chil- dren per marriage. There has been no case of idiocy or deaf-mutism, and but one of insanity, in an old woman. M. Voisan reports observations, in the isolated commune of Batz, of 46 consanguineous marriages. These gave 172 children. Sterility occurred in two instances. Mental disorders, idiocy, deaf-