The intermarriage of relations / by Nathan Allen.

  • Allen, Nathan, 1813-1889.
Date:
1869
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The intermarriage of relations / by Nathan Allen. 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.

    42/56 (page 42)
    4*2 marked degeneracy, but an inevitable tendency to the extinction of suck a people. Or let the animal nature alone gain complete ascendency—its wants absorb all the attention of the mind as well as the labor of the hand, and the whole body sinks into a gross, sensual, and beastly state, and we shall find that Infinite Wis- dom has set limits to the race in this direction. Or let the nervous temperament become altogether too pre- dominant—let it absorb all the nutrition of the body, let the mind ascend to the highest possible state of refinement, culture, and spirituality, to the neglect of the body as such, we shall find the offspring physically growing feeble, weaker, fewer in number, and finally incapable of propagating the race. Occasionally we find in the writings of medical men of high authority sentiments favorable to the views here advocated, though 23enned a long time^since. Such is the following quotation from Dr. Pritchard : “Nature seems to have designed that the conditions and ten- dencies of human organisms should be kept very nearly in a state of equilibrium. This equipoise necessary to the healthy condition of man, upon whatever inexplica- ble cause it may depend, may be readily disarranged by giving undue predominance to any particular con- stitutional phase. The slighter deviations from a nor- mal mean would constitute individual or family pecu- liarities ; while more marked perversions become mor- bid manifestations, and infirmity results. As in the moral man none are exempt from the taint of sin, so in the physical man each individual of our race has his obliquity toward disease—generally, perhaps uni- formly, toward some particular disease. It is, then, rea- sonable to expect that, when two individuals marry who possess the same morbid proclivity, their offspring