“In our field,” put in Maude Schofield, “I might express the thought this way—the sociologist has had his day; now it is the biologist, the eugenist.”
“That expresses it,” commented Kennedy, still tinkering with the record. “Yet it does not mean that because we have new ideas, they abolish the old. Often they only explain, amplify, supplement. For instance,” he said, looking up at Edith Atherton, “take heredity. Our knowledge seems new, but is it? Marriages have always been dictated by a sort of eugenics. Society is founded on that.”
“Precisely,” she answered. “The best families have always married into the best families. These modern notions simply recognize what the best people have always thought—except that it seems to me,” she added with a sarcastic flourish, “people of no ancestry are trying to force themselves in among their betters.”
“Very true, Edith,” drawled Burroughs, “but we did not have to be brought here by Quincy to learn that.”
Quincy Atherton had risen during the discussion and had approached Kennedy. Craig continued to finger the phonograph abstractedly, as he looked up.
“About this—this insanity theory,” he whispered eagerly. “You think that the suspicions I had have been justified?”
I had been watching Kennedy’s hand. As soon as Atherton had started to speak, I saw that Craig, as before, had moved the key, evidently registering what he said, as he had in the case of the others during the discussion.
“One moment, Atherton,” he whispered in reply, “I’m coming to that. Now,” he resumed aloud, “there is a disease, or a number of diseases, to which my remarks about insanity a while ago might apply very well. They have been known for some time to arise from various affections of the thyroid glands in the neck. These glands, strange to say, if acted on in certain ways can cause degenerations of mind and body, which are well known, but in spite of much study are still very little understood. For example, there is a definite interrelation between them and sex—especially in woman.”
Rapidly he sketched what he had already told me of the thyroid and the hormones. “These hormones,” added Kennedy, “are closely related to many reactions in the body, such as even the mother’s secretion of milk at the proper time and then only. That and many other functions are due to the presence and character of these chemical secretions from the thyroid and other ductless glands. It is a fascinating study. For we know that anything that will upset—reduce or increase—the hormones is a matter intimately concerned with health. Such changes,” he said earnestly, leaning forward, “might be aimed directly at the very heart of what otherwise would be a true eugenic marriage. It is even possible that loss of sex itself might be made to follow deep changes of the thyroid.”
He stopped a moment. Even if he had accomplished nothing else he had struck a note which had caused the Athertons to forget their former superciliousness.