Facts and Fictions of Life

by Helen H. Gardener

Of course there are many and varied points in his theory of heredity with which only the biologist is capable of dealing. But as I intimated at first, the Lamarck-Darwin-Weismann controversy, so far as the sociological aspect of the question is involved, does not touch us. It belongs to the laboratory—to the how and not to the fact of transmission. But since the opposite impression has taken root in even some thoughtful minds, it is well to meet it in a direct and easily grasped form. There is a simple and direct method; I undertook it. I went to a number of well-known biologists and physicians and asked these questions;—

1. Are there any diseases known to you, which you are absolutely certain are contracted by individuals whose ancestors did not have them, which diseases you can trace as to time and place of contraction, and which are of a nature to produce physical and mental changes that are recognizable in the child as due to the parent's condition?

2. Have you ever had such cases under your own care?

3. Have you a record of cases where the children of your patients received the effects of the disease of the parent in a manner that would show that "acquired character or condition" is transmittible?

4. Is this true in a kind of disorder which would produce in the child a change of structure or condition so profound as to change its character and run it in a channel distinctly the result of the "acquirement" of the parent?

I thought it best to go to specialists in brain and nerve disorders and to those who had had large hospital or asylum experiences. One of these, Dr. Henry Smith Williams, ex-medical superintendent of Randall's Island, where the city of New York sends its imbecile and epileptic children, and where many hundreds of these came under his care, replied that there could be no doubt of the fact that such "acquired" characters or conditions are transmitted. One case which he gave me, however, from his private practice will illustrate the point most clearly. B., a healthy man with no hereditary taint of the kind, acquired syphilis at a given time and in a known way. Before this time he was the father of one daughter. Several years later another daughter was born to him. The first girl is and has always been absolutely free from any and all taint. The other one has all the inherited marks of her father's "acquired character" and condition, which even went the length in her of producing the recognized change in the form of the teeth due to this disease. Now for all practical purposes it does not matter in the faintest degree whether that transmission was in accordance with pangenesis or by means of a vitiated environment of the "germ plasm." The fact is the appalling thing for the reader to face. And I give this case only because it was one of a vast number of similar ones which came to me in reply to my questions addressed to different practitioners and specialists.

Among other places, I went to the head of a maternity hospital. This is what I got there: "If Weismann or any of his followers doubts for one second the distinct, absolute, unmistakable transmission of acquired disease of a kind to modify 'character' both mental and physical—if they doubt its results on humanity—they have never given even a slight study to the hospital side of life.

"I can give you hundreds of cases where there is no escape from the proof that the children are born with the taint of an 'acquired character' from which they cannot free themselves. Sometimes it is shown in one form, sometimes in another, but it is as unmistakable as the color of the eyes or the number of the toes. To deny it is to deny all experience. I am not a biologist and I do not undertake to explain how it is done, but I will undertake to prove that it is done to the satisfaction of the most sceptical. Come in this ward. There is a child whose parents were robust, healthy, strong country folk until"—and then followed the history of the parents who had "acquired" the "character" which they transmitted—which had made the mental, moral and physical cripple in the ward before me. "Now here is what they transmitted. Do you fancy that if that half idiot should ever have children they will be 'whole'? No argument but vision is needed here. That child's condition is the result of acquired character. Its children and its children's children will carry the acquirement—for we are not wise enough yet to eliminate even such as that from among active propagators of the race! If it were possible (which, thank Heaven, is not likely) that the other parent of this half imbecile's children would be of a sane and lofty type there might be a modification upward again in the progeny, but even then we would not soon lose the direct, undeniable, patent 'acquirement' which you see here."

It was the same story from each and every practitioner. The hospital and asylum experts, the specialists in diseases of mind or body which were due to direct acquirement (such as drunkenness, syphilis and acquired epilepsy), were particularly strong in their contempt for even the theory that acquired character and condition are not transmittible. One laughingly said: "I'll grant that if I cut off a man's leg or a few of his fingers, his children will not be likely to be deformed because of that operation. This is not a permeating constitutional condition, it is a mere local mutilation. But if I were to take out a part of his brain so as to produce ["acquired">[ epilepsy upon him I believe his children will be affected, and if he is a bad syphilitic [acquired] I know his children will be. Mind you, I don't say exactly what they will have, and they may not all have the same thing, but I do say that their 'germ plasm' or whatever they come from, will carry the results of the acquired condition and character." *

*"Brown-Sequard observed that injury to the central or
peripheral nervous system (spinal cord, oblongata, peduncle,
corpora quadrigem-ina, sciatic nerve) of guinea pigs
produced epilepsy, and this condition even became
hereditary. Westphal made guinea pigs epileptic by repeated
blows on the skull, and this condition also became
hereditary."—** Manual of Human Physiology," by L. Landou,
translated with additions by W. Sterling. 1885.
Dr. L. Putzell, in his "Treatise on the Common Forms of
Functional Nervous Diseases," 1880, after describing the
methods by which Brown-Sequard produced epilepsy
traumatically in guinea pigs, says: "Brown Sequard also
made the curious observation that the young of guinea pigs
who had been made epileptic in this manner, may develop the
disease spontaneously. These experiments have been verified
by Schiff, Westphal and numerous other observers."