The inborn factors in disease : an essay / by Archibald E. Garrod.

  • Archibald Garrod
Date:
1931
Catalogue details

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

Credit: The inborn factors in disease : an essay / by Archibald E. Garrod. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    HEALTH AND DISEASE 39 ments, there are internal and external factors concerned of such minor degrees that their presence is hardly recognizable, or fails to be detected by the methods at our disposal. II THE CHEMICAL BASIS OF INDIVIDUALITY The particular chemical type, the particular mode and rate of the chemical changes of tissues, passes from father to son, as the shape of the features passes.—^john simon. 1876. IN the preceding sketch of the history of the doctrines of diathesis it was mentioned that, as far back as the middle of the nineteenth century, some writers had sug¬ gested that the liabilities of certain individuals to parti¬ cular diseases might have their origin in disturbances or irregularities of the metabolic processes of the indi¬ viduals in question. At that time such an explanation was open to the objection that it explained the unknown by the even less known ; but although biochemistry has made immense advances since then, the further the matter is investigated the more probable does it appear that the suggestion is justified. It will be desirable therefore to examine, in this section, the evidence which favours the supposition that our individuality has a chemical basis; for the inborn factors in disease are merely facets of our in¬ dividuality. In our pursuit of this aim it will be necessary to go back as far aS' the very germinal cells and their chromo-