Degeneracy: Its Causes, Signs and Results

by Eugene S. Talbot

In from three to six weeks after the operation an alteration in the nutrition takes place in an area of skin which is limited by a line starting from the outer canthus of the eye, and running to the median line on the upper lip, enclosing the nostril, thence backward enclosing the lower jaw, to the anterior portion of the shoulder to the median dorsal line, to the base of the ear and inner canthus of the eye. The alteration in nutrition occurs on the side corresponding to the injury. The pain, heat and cold sense disappear by degrees, while touch appears to be exalted. Very soon, tickling this zone of skin gives rise to twitchings limited to the muscles of the eye and the eyelids on the same side. Later, the muscles of the mouth and of the face are affected, still later the contractions become more general, until the whole side is the seat of convulsions, then the convulsions attack the other side also. When things have come to this point the convulsions precede by a very short time complete loss of consciousness. If the subject of experiment be white, it is found that there is paleness of the face, but in all cases there is little foam at the mouth and dilatation of the pupils. The animal sometimes utters a cry corresponding to the epileptic cry in the man. Not only are the convulsions identical with those in epileptic man, but there is also loss of consciousness, a state of torpor, stupor, and even sometimes insanity. When epilepsy is due to the destruction of the sciatic nerve, the foot of the affected side loses the two outer toes, so that the animal has only one toe, the inner. When young are born to such a parent or parents (for it matters not whether one or both of the parents have been operated upon), they have very often only one toe on the posterior foot. Sometimes, however, they have additional toes, which, in this case, are attached by a pedicle to the limb.

Those peculiarities observed in the parents are in all their details witnessed in the guinea-pigs hereditarily born toeless, who have developed epileptic phenomena. In Dupuy’s cases not only is the epileptic tendency (of which Weismann gives a wholly imaginative microbic explanation) inherited, but the very stigmata (loss of toes) which mark development of the parental epilepsy.

E. D. Cope’s[77] careful studies of the effects of impacts and strains on the feet of mammals are testimony difficult for Weismann to explain, since they also meet his requirements.

Weismann’s admission of the inheritance of a tuberculous habit must logically, from the standpoint of degeneracy, be regarded as destroying his claims.

Kiernan has observed the case of a female cat in which brain mutilation had been induced to secure secondary cerebro-spinal degenerations. The mutilations were made under antiseptic precautions. The descendants of this cat had traces of the mutilation, and its results until the fourth generation, when the breed became extinct. This instance certainly fulfils all Weismann requirements.

In the Lambert family a skin deformity, the last result of degeneracy in previous generations, was transmitted. This peculiarity appeared first, according to Proctor,[78] in the person of Edward Lambert, whose whole body, except his face, the palms of the hands and the soles of the feet, was covered with a horny excrescence. He was the father of six children, all of whom as soon as they had reached the age of six weeks presented the same peculiarity. The only one of them who lived transmitted the peculiarity to all his sons. For five generations all the male members of the family were distinguished by the horny excrescence which had adorned the body of Edward Lambert.

Shwe-Maong, one of the hairless Burmese, when thirty years old had his whole body covered with silky hairs, which attained a length of nearly five inches on the shoulders and spine. He had four daughters, but only one of them resembled him. She had a son who was hairy like his grandfather. The case of this family illustrates rather curiously the relation between the hair and teeth; for Shwe-Maong retained his milk teeth till he was twenty (when he attained puberty); then they were replaced by nine teeth only, five in the upper and four in the lower jaw. Eight of these were incisors, the ninth (in the upper jaw) being a cuspid tooth.

Certain motor expressions of disturbed functions are also inherited. Galton describes the case of a man who, when he lay fast asleep on his back in bed, had the curious trick of raising his right arm slowly in front of his face, up to his forehead, and then dropping it with a jerk, so that the wrist fell heavily on the bridge of his nose. The trick did not occur every night, but occasionally, and was independent of any ascertained cause. Sometimes it was repeated incessantly for an hour or more. The gentleman’s nose was prominent and its bridge often became sore from blows which it received. At one time an awkward sore was produced that was long in healing on account of the recurrence, night after night, of the blows which first caused it. His wife had to remove the buttons from the wrist of his nightgown, as it made severe scratches, and some means were attempted of tying his arm. Many years after his death his son married a lady who had never heard of the family incident. She, however, observed precisely the same peculiarity in her husband; but his nose, from not being particularly prominent, has never as yet suffered from the blows. The trick does not occur when he is half asleep, as, for example, when he is dozing in his armchair, but the moment he is fast asleep he is apt to begin. It, as with his father, is intermittent, sometimes ceasing for many nights, and sometimes almost incessant during a part of every night. It is performed, as it was with his father, with his right hand. One of his children, a girl, has inherited the same trick. She performs it likewise with the right hand but in a slightly modified form; for after raising the arm she does not allow the wrist to drop upon the bridge of the nose, but the palm of her half-closed hand falls over and down the nose, striking it rather rapidly, a decided improvement on the father’s and grandfather’s method. The trick is intermittent in the girl’s case also, sometimes not occurring for periods of several months, but sometimes almost incessantly. These “tricks” suggest nocturnal epilepsy, however.

The face of a child is often fully developed, yet, owing to some of the constitutional diseases, arrested development of the face at this point takes place. The second generation inherits this deformity, while the grandparents possess normally developed faces.

The following case came under my own immediate observation. The grandfather was in the habit of sitting in front of the fire with fingers locked together twirling the thumbs in one direction, and then occasionally knocking the thumb nails together. Two of his three sons inherited this habit; the third brother had the habit of biting his nails when in a fit of abstraction. The nephew of the last has a similar habit under the like conditions. The children of this nephew have in two instances shown a tendency to pick at the nails when in an unconscious state, from acute disease. The third child has a periodical tendency to do the same since it was four months old.