File:The groundwork of eugenics (1909) (14782975393).jpg

Identifier: groundworkofeuge1909pear (find matches)
Title: The groundwork of eugenics
Year: 1909 (1900s)
Authors: Pearson, Karl, 1857-1936
Subjects: Eugenics
Publisher: London, Dulau and Co.
Contributing Library: Wellesley College Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Wellesley College Library

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appeared with two tailless kittens, the offspringof a mother who had been curtailed. But the pedigree offather and mother for many generations would have to becarefully scanned in order that we might be clear as to ances-try, and cats are not infrequently born tailless without a tail-less family history. Weismann in twenty-two successivegenerations of curtailed mice had 1,592 tailed offspring andnone born in any degree tailless, and Bos and Von Rosenthalhave confirmed on both rats and mice these experiments.^ That unhealthy life, alcohol, excess of any kind, may causeweakened somatic cells to react on the germ cells, and affectthe physique of the offspring, may be accepted, but this doesnot involve the inheritance of acquired characters. Indeedthe whole of the proofs recently given that drunkenness isfound in the parents of idiots, epileptics, the insane and the Martius (Patho^cnesc innerer Krankhdten, 1909) gives a trenchantcriticism of all this evidence to which I am much indebted.
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THE GROUNDWORK OF EUGENICS 17 criminal, and of women who cannot suckle their own off-spring, fail because they do not satisfactorily demonstratethat the drunkenness was acquired by a normal stock, in whichno degeneracy was known before the parent took to drink. Ifwe start, not from the offspring of the alcoholic, but from thealcoholic themselves, and work backwards, we find in themajority of cases that they come of alcoholic, epileptic ordegenerate stocks. Hence while we are not forced to denythat injured somatic cells may sometimes degrade the germcells, we must be very stringent in our criticism of the typeof proof habitually given of such interaction. It would in-deed seem that while Nature had made it easy for an indivi-dual to modify his bodily cells, she has made it very hard forthe toxine in either blood or lymph to reach the germ cells.As Martins puts it: The individual stands in far greaterdanger than the race . It may not be out of place at this point to remind you ofthe exp

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