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.

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    paper of Dr. Bemiss already referred to. These statis- tics were carefully collected, mostly by medical men, from almost every State in the Union, and from no extreme point of view; they may be considered there- fore as a fair and correct representation of the case as it is found in all grades or classes of society. This re- port gives 580 instances of intermarriage of cousins, resulting in 2,778 children, of which 793 were defec- tive; 117 deaf and djimb; 63 blind; 231 idiotic; 24 insane; 44 epileptic; 189 scrofulous; 53 deformed; and 637 died early. The proportion of offspring here reported as defec- tive, diseased, constitutionally impaired in body or mind, is certainly much larger than what would be found in the same number of children taken from the same number of families indiscriminately in the community. This same report embraces a large number of such marriages where there were few children with defec- tive, diseased, or impaired organization; and also some families among them having numerous offspring, very healthy and promising in character. These were in- stances where the parents had not only good sound con- stitutions, but temperaments and a physical organiza- tion different, so that the parties were well adapted or matched to each other, rendering*the union prolific and the progeny comparatively sound. But inasmuch as there is in cousins, according to the best statistics gathered, so much of a family resemblance or likeness, and so much imperfection of structure or morbidness of function or eccentricity of character is found to accompany it, that the hereditary effects are decidedly prejudicial to offspring, we are warranted in laying it down as a general rule, that cousins should not intermarry. This rule is the more imperative, when