Moore.
he rose is a sweetly beautiful flower, and no matter where it grows it somehow always charms the human eye, always appeals to the human heart. Lovely it is in the garden, especially perhaps at early morning when gemmed by dew, the crystalline tears left by the dying night, or at eventide, when the colour in a rose-garden seems to reflect the tints of the sunset clouds. Roses of all classes and kinds are lovely, grow they where they may, on castle lawn or draping the walls of the humblest cottage. And just as sweet and tender are those lovely buds and blossoms of the crimson rosa canina that bedeck and mantle our hedges in the month of June.
Children are ofttimes comparable to roses—girl-children I mean—mere opening buds, and they ought to be none the less beautiful and innocent-looking when older, but still in their teens. Ah, those “teens,” would we not all prefer to remain that age and never to grow older! I suppose angels are all and always in their teens, and the saints in Heaven too!
But descending from romance, with which a medical man ought to have nothing to do, the stern reality, life, to a girl in her teens is often a trying time. This, for many reasons which I shall now briefly consider and advise upon.
Every mother, if not her children, has often heard the word “heredity” mentioned. The offspring is part and parcel of the parents, and inherits, somewhat changed or modified perhaps, not only their good qualities, their strength of body, brain, and constitution, but their diseases also, if they have any. There is no mystery about that, as some medical men tell us. It would be a mystery if it were the reverse. If you take a cutting off a pure red rose, you could scarcely expect it when grown into a bush to develop yellow roses. It is part and parcel of the parent, and so is the child. But separate life and the mode or manner of living may alter even inherited complaints, or prevent their showing forth at all. It does not follow as a constant rule that the children of, say, scrofulous parents shall be consumptive, or that those of parents addicted to drink and dishonesty shall follow the parental lead. It is this fact that gives one such hope in treating the ailments and guiding the young lives of those who may be supposed to be born with a taint of impure blood.
Note, mother, please, that I have said “young lives” in my last sentence, because it is when young, and only then, that much good can be done to combat the evils of heredity.
We are sometimes told that the particular ailment handed down may skip one generation and appear in the next. This should only give us additional certainty that the trouble may be eradicated entirely. For Nature does not skip generations in the manner some scientists would have us believe. If an ailment, say phthisis or consumption, is the trouble in one family and the children thereof escape, while the grandchildren are attacked, one of two things may have happened; the first generation of the afflicted ones had been reared in circumstances inimical to the dispersing of the disorder, it lay latent in their blood and revivified under circumstances favourable to it, in the grandchildren, or—this is just as likely—the seed of the disease died in the first generation, and the second were infected by ordinary means. Phthisis is infectious: this should always be born in mind, and a consumptive person should invariably sleep alone in the airiest and best ventilated room in the house.
When I say that consumption is hereditary, I am of course showing you that I am a believer in the microbe doctrine. So is every sensible man. The microbes of phthisis may be carried in the breath from the sick to the sound; or dried sputa—ever so little—may form dust and be breathed, thus inoculating, as it were, the person who inhales it. Not of a certainty, however, for there are many chances against those microbes, even if breathed, finding their way into the blood. Healthy blood is in itself a protection, for the white corpuscles thereof are veritable tigers in miniature, and fall upon and destroy organisms that are dangerous to the life or health of the individual. Moreover a disease germ or seed of consumption cannot, in every case, even reach the mucous membrance of the lungs, owing to the secretions therein which sweep it away, if they do not actually destroy it. On the other hand a weakly subject is far more likely to fall a victim to infection of any kind than a strong. A consumptive mother may have several children, all of which, bar one, are safe enough, though all must have inherited the evil microbe or bacillus. And this is chiefly because one is more delicate than the others.
But I deem it my duty to say here at once that a consumptive person should never marry.