The intermarriage of relatives and its consequences.

  • C. J. M.
Date:
[1890?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The intermarriage of relatives and its consequences. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    [Reprinted from the Irish Ecclesiastical Record. ] THE INTERMARRIAGE OF RELATIVES AND ITS CONSEQUENCES. THAT the intermarriage of blood-relatives is ordinarily attended with calamitous consequences to their offspring, might be established by ci priori arguments which belong to the school of physiology, and of which the present writer has no knowledge. We may, however, satisfy ourselves as to the conclusiveness of those arguments from the fact— of which we are credibly assured—that they are accepted by our Catholic physiologists generally; by not a few non- Catholic writers on that science; and that the hesitancy (for it is no more) of many English Protestant authors may be traced to their unwillingness to condemn a practice so common amongst themselves, and in which they may, per- haps, be personally concerned. As a distinct illustration of this unwillingness, we may refer to the fact, recorded by Dr. Shuttleworth of Lancaster (The Relation of Marriages of Consanguinity to Mental Unsoundness), that when, in 1871, ftir J. Lubbock suggested to the House of Commons “ that a question should be inserted in the Schedules [of Census Heturns] with reference to cousin marriages,” the proposal •net with “ the scornful laughter of the House, on the ground that the idle curiosity of speculative philosophers was not to be gratified—at any rate by State aid.” With all this easily intelligible disinclination to reprobate marriages of consanguinity, we find many eminent writers