Blastophthoria.—By blastophthoria, or deterioration of the germ, I mean what might also be called false heredity, that is to say, the results of all direct pathogenic or disturbing action, especially that of certain intoxications, on the germinal cells, whose hereditary determinants are thus changed. Blastophthoria thus acts on germs not yet conjugated, through the medium of their bearers, and creates at their origin hereditary stigmata of all kinds, while true heredity only combines and reproduces the ancestral energies.
Blastophthoria deranges the mneme or hereditary engrams, and consequently a more or less considerable part of their ecphorias during the life of the individuals which arise from them. It is not a question here of the reproduction of the hereditary ancestral energies in the descendants (in different combinations) as is the case in the heredity which we have just studied, but, on the contrary, a question of their perturbation. However, the store of cells reserved as germinal cells in the embryo, the germ of which has been damaged by blastophthoric action, being usually also affected by the disturbing cause, it follows that the pathological change introduced by blastophthoria in the hereditary mneme is transmitted to the descendants by ordinary heredity. In this way blastophthoria deposits the first germ of most pathological degenerations by causing immediate deviation of all the determinants of the germ in the same direction.
The most typical and the commonest example of blastophthoria is that of alcoholic intoxication. The spermatozoa of alcoholics suffer like the other tissues from the toxic action of alcohol on the protoplasm. The result of this intoxication of the germs may be that the children resulting from their conjugation become idiots, epileptics, dwarfs or feeble minded. Thus it is not alcoholism or the craving for drink which is inherited. No doubt the peculiarity of badly supporting alcohol is inherited by ordinary heredity as a hereditary disposition, but it is not this which produces the alcoholic degenerations of the race. These are the result of the single blastophthoria. When, on the other hand, a man is found to be imbecile or epileptic as the result of the insobriety of his father, he preserves the tendency to transmit his mental weakness or his epilepsy to his descendants, even when he abstains completely from alcoholic drinks. In fact, the chromosomes of the spermatozoid, from which about a half of his organism has issued, have preserved the pathological derangement produced by the parental alcoholism in their hereditary mneme, and have transmitted it to the store of germinal cells of the feeble minded or the epileptic, who in his turn transmits it to his descendants. From Weismann's point of view his hereditary determinants remain pathologically deviated. All intoxications which alter the protoplasm of the germinal cells may produce blastophthoric degenerations, which continue to menace several successive generations in the form of hereditary taints.
Other deviations in the development of the germs may act in an analogous manner to blastophthoria. We have mentioned above the experiments of Merrifield and Standfuss on the caterpillars of certain butterflies. Without being really of a pathological nature, these actions of a physical agent on the hereditary energies resemble blastophthoria.
Mechanical action on the embryo may also give rise to pathological products or even mutilation. Thus, Weismann demonstrated the production of degenerate individuals in ants when certain coleoptera were introduced in their nest, the ants being fond of the secretion of the large glandular hairs of the coleoptera. The exact cause of the degeneration has not yet been found, but the fact is certain. In man, certain constitutional affections and congenital anomalies are the result of certain diseases in the procreators, which have affected the germinal cells or the embryo (for instance syphilis). As soon as the blastophthoric actions cease in the procreators, those of their descendants who live under a normal regimen have evidently a tendency to eliminate the blastophthoric organs at the end of several generations and to regenerate themselves little by little. Thanks to the power of the ancestral mneme which tends to reëstablish homophony. However, the data on this subject are insufficient. In this case homophony is represented by the normal equilibrium of the different typical or normal characters of the species.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] I insert here some passages intended for more advanced readers, but this does not imply that they are of less importance. On the contrary I strongly advise all my readers to try and understand the theories of Hering and Semon, which appear to me to throw a new light on the question of transformation and heredity.