Marriage and disease : a study of heredity and the more important family degenerations / S.A.K. Strahan.

Date:
1892
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Marriage and disease : a study of heredity and the more important family degenerations / S.A.K. Strahan. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    3 mitted to call into existence a wretched offspring. In this way we make an attempt to hold Nature at bay. We fight and struggle with all our strength against the inexorable law which condemns the unfit to extinction. Fortunately for the race, our success, our greatest success, can only he temporary. At best we can only for a little time put off the evil day, if it can be called evil, and where in the end is our gain ? In the more primitive and natural conditions of life, the weakling is at once removed, because of his inherent weakness, his unfitness, his inability to suit himself to his surroundings; whereas we, in our wisdom, en- deavour to postpone that consummation, and it is not until one, two, or perhaps three generations of suffer- ing wastrels have fretted and wept their hour upon the stage, that we stand aside, unable longer to bar the path, and see Nature do her work. I do not for a moment intend to question the righteousness of these endeavours of civilised man on behalf of his afflicted brother. With that great ques- tion we have nothing here to do; we can but admire the beauty of the unselfish and Christian spirit which prompts his action, and regret that Nature vouchsafes him such a sorry reward. Our business on this occa- sion is of a far more practical character than the consideration of such vexed questions. It is to tell those whom it may concern—and it concerns the whole race—that disease is being handed down from father to son, from mother to daughter, from parent to child; to point out how all-important to the race, how