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 HEREDITY IN EELATION TO DISEASE 41 basis. Contrast, too, in this respect, muscular dystrophy, which may slowly reduce a patient to the condition of a living skeleton with the perverted condition of muscular contraction known as myotonia congenita or Thomson's disease. Notice, too, that most remarkable family disease called periodic paralysis, in which the patient experiences recurrent attacks of paralysis, so complete that even the electrical reactions of the muscles disappear; yet the attack passes off and he is well in the intervals. This affection has been traced back through as many as five generations. There can hardly be a gross lesion ; and the suggestion has been made that some poison is at work, perhaps produced by the patient's own faulty metabolism; an inborn error of metabolism like those with wbich our Croonian lecturer. Dr. Grarrod, has made us acquainted. In these family nervous diseases the curious phenomenon of sex limitation is sometimes seen, and generally in this sort, that females are themselves not affected, yet they transmit the disease. This was pointed out, I think, by