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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    relations influence idiocy and imbecility more than they do the acquired forms of insanity, or those which show themselves after childhood.”—(Blood-Relationship in Marriage, die.) But perhaps no stronger argument need be adduced to establish the melancholy consequences of intermarriage than that which is found in the fact that the advocates of its “harmlessness” require, as an essential prerequisite in the parents, the presence of conditions that are most rarely, if ever, verified ; and which, even if verified, would, according to Sir Crichton Browne, Devay, Sir Arthur Mitchell, &c., afford no guarantee whatsoever. The editor of the Lancet, in the paragraph already referred to, answers the question, Do consanguineous marriages lead to disease in the off- spring?” His words are pregnant with suggestion Our reply has constantly been, 1 Providing both parents are' healthy ’—which here means devoid of all taint—‘ no harm need be expected to result to the children of such mar- riages.’ ” But, he adds : “If both parents exhibit a proclivity! to any particular form of disease (as, for example, to scrofula), the tendency is likely to be exaggerated iu the children.’ This very negative argument represents the fullest force o: the defence put forward by those who advocate the possible “harmlessness” of cousin marriages; but, in the face u what has been already written, and of what is to follow, i is practically of no value. Even a non-medical man nun confidently interpolate that, as (1) no man or woman exist without some more or less serious default of constitution, am (2) as that default is, as a rule, possessed either openly o latently by all of near cousmship, such default is sure to b reproduced in an “ exaggerated ” form in the offspring. Th unhappy progeny derives a “ double dose ” of the malady concentrated within the compass of a single constitutioi M here the parents are not related by blood, there may b some corrective: here there is stimulated growth. I shall conclude those general observations by repeatin that, according to the most eminent and experienced writer | it matters little whether the disease that may be“exa|j gerated” in the offspring, has been “ exhibited” or “latent in the parents; and furthermore, that the development an i