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.

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    consanguinity is an important factor in unsoundness of mind. I have not had sufficient information in any of these cases to enable me to divide the children into two classes, i. e. (i) those who are the children of normal parents, and (2) those who are the children of defective parents, either deaf-mutes or insane. I think this distinction is an important one, as the question of cousin marriage becomes of far more importance when we consider the case of two persons, quite healthy themselves, but who belong to a stock tainted with some defect. When one or both of the cousins concerned is a sufferer from some defect we may take it for granted that no one would advise their marriage, but when both the cousins are quite healthy the real problem of cousin marriage arises. There are some interesting statistics in an Appendix to the Report of the Royal Commission on the Blind, the Deaf and the Dumb, 1889. A table is included showing all the children who were admitted to an American asylum for deaf-mutes from 1877-87 and had any deaf-mute relatives. From this table I have taken all the families where neither parent is a deaf-mute and found that there are 51. I know this is a small number, but the proportion of cousin marriages among those 51 pairs ot normal paients who all had at least one deaf child is very striking. There are 26 cases of consanguineous marriages and only 25 of non-consanguineous marriages, that is 50 % consanguineous marriages among normal parents result- ing in deaf-mute children, which is an enormous per- centage. There seems little doubt that if there is any deaf-mutism in a stock, a cousin marriage, even when both parties are free from the disease, is most dangerous to the offspring. And in considering the question ot