On heredity in relation to disease : the Harveian Oration for 1908, delivered before the Royal College of Physicians of London on October 19th, 1908 / by J.A. Ormerod.

  • Ormerod, J. A. (Joseph Arderne), 1848-1925.
Date:
1908
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: On heredity in relation to disease : the Harveian Oration for 1908, delivered before the Royal College of Physicians of London on October 19th, 1908 / by J.A. Ormerod. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    ON HEßBDITY IN EBLATION TO DISEASE 35 inter se, of someone underljingnervousdef ect; we may perhaps call them the ill-timed or inappropriate response of a nervous system which adapts itself badly to its surroundings. This deeply-seated nervous defect, whatever its precise nature may be, is hereditary in a high degree, so that the neuropathic family' is now notorious in medicine. One member • of it may be epileptic, another insane, another eccentric and so forth, but the faulty nervous constitution is the same in all. So much we know, but there is much more that we should like to know. How, asks Dr. Savage, in his Presidential Address to the Neurological Society,* does this instability of nervous system originate ? May it have begun through faulty nutrition of some ancestor, so profound that his germinal tissues suffered with the rest of his body ? That might suggest a hope that in time it might be rectified by reversing the process. Or may it be that his germinal tissues were old and effete when he under¬ took the process of procreation ? Or is it, after all, some deeply ingrained fault, origina- * 'Brain,' vol. XX.