On the marriage of first cousins / by Ethel M. Elderton.

  • Elderton, Ethel Mary.
Date:
1911
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: On the marriage of first cousins / by Ethel M. Elderton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    21/52 (page 17)
    The following harmful results are usually urged by opponents of consanguineous marriages :— (i) Marked decrease in fertility. (ii) A high infantile mortality. (iii) The occurrence of deaf-mutism, insanity, albinism, hare-lip and other deformities with greater frequency among the offspring of such marriages than among the general population. Of these asserted baneful results of cousin marriages the first seems to have attracted special attention from the opponents of consanguineous marriages. Pope Gregory the First declared that marriages be- tween near kin proved sterile. That this argument against such marriages had been widely used seems probable from a letter of Simon Dugard on The Marriages of Cousin-Germans vindicated from the censures of Unlaw- fulness and Inexpediency, published in 1673, where he gives as the fourth objection to such marriages ‘ the ill prospering of them ’, and says that it has been urged that ‘ a Want of Children and a Barrenesse‘ follows such marriages. Dugard answers the objectors by pointing out that such want of children also often follows non-consanguineous marriages, and goes on to say that if cousins do have smaller families it may not be • an unmixed evil, since ‘ I might, Sir, mention the great affliction that some men have from children when their number increases and they have not withall to breed them up answerable to the Love they have for them ’. To this question as to the decrease in fertility and to the second question as to a high infantile mortality I can find no complete answer; both are vehemently denied by some and as vehemently asserted by others ; but I have failed to discover any really satisfactory B