I must say a few words at the outset on the terrible scourge of these islands, which most people call consumption, and the medical profession phthisis. The question “Is it hereditary?” stares us in the face at once whenever we think of it, and it is a somewhat difficult one to answer. I myself do not believe in heredity in the ordinary sense of the word as applied to disease. A beautiful young shoot of wood may spring from a fast-decaying tree, and if this be transplanted into good soil, it will grow as well as any other. What holds good as regards vegetable life cannot of course be shown to be quite true as regards animal, nevertheless there is a certain analogy. Consumption we believe to be infectious; if so, it is caused by a disease germ. Now your old-school hereditists would tell us that this germ descends from mother to child. In some cases it does or may, but the child very soon succumbs to tabes mesenterica, or some other terrible infantile disease. A germ will do one of two things: it will either assert itself very speedily, or be killed in the system. Nature sets about at once getting rid of these disease germs, supposing them to exist at the time of birth. She brings, among other organs of relief, the absorbents and glands into play; there is a struggle for life, in which nature often fails, because those very glands become overladen and diseased, tubercle being formed and multiplied within them. Nature does her best, but she is beaten—another proof of the struggle betwixt what we call evil and good, which is constantly going on in this world.

Well, on the other hand, if the child is born of delicate parents, but free from germs, it has, if carefully fed, nursed, and tended, a very excellent chance of growing up well. It is difficult to conceive of a child having germs of, say, consumption in its system and these lying latent or dormant until she is a certain age, and then springing suddenly into life after she has suffered from some exposure and caught cold in the chest. There are easier theories than this by far and away to account for the children of consumptive parents dying of the same disease in their later teens. Besides, that word “latent” may be convenient, but it is a shockingly unmeaning one. I remember my father buying for a good round sum a few grains of wheat that were said to have been in the grasp of a mummy for a thousand years. The wheat when sown grew most certainly. It may never have been in the hands of a mummy at all, but it may have been. If so, it was surrounded by dead matter, it was hermetically sealed against any influence that could cause it to germinate. Life was latent or asleep. But in the human body germs have no chance of dorminating, for so constant are the changes, that everything is constantly getting shifted, and by the time a man or woman is fifty he or she may have used up a score of bodies.

However, there is this to be said concerning the children of consumptive parents: they are born delicate, and therefore far more likely to fall victims to the scourge than others.

May they grow out of this delicacy of constitution? Yes, and that is the question I am going to consider, but I must answer another one, and it is one, too, that strikes at the very root of sociality: should consumptive people, or those suffering from other so-called hereditary ailments, marry? I say, “No.” They are, if they do so, guilty of as great a crime as many a felon who leaves the dock with the dread sentence of the judge ringing in his ears. It is sad to have to answer the question in such seemingly cruel words, but nevertheless I believe I am doing my duty in giving that reply.

There are two ways in which a young woman can give herself to God in this world, and both are honourable. One is by marrying the man she loves if he be healthy in body and pure in mind—not else—and thus becoming Heaven’s own servant for the happy propagation of healthful species and the progress of the world; the other is by—if weakly—remaining celibate and devoting her time, her talents and energies to doing good to her fellow beings without hope of reward in this world. There is a charm about a woman like this (though foolish people may sneer at her as an old maid) that it is difficult to describe.

I have met many such, and seem to have seen a halo already around their heads. I am a physician, naturalist, scientist, if you will, and something of an astronomer, and being so of course—to some extent—a doubter, but I do most sincerely believe that the good in this weary wicked world will ultimately prevail, and those who help it onwards will not go unrewarded in a future life whatever that life may be.

Now to lay down a few simple rules for the treatment of weakly children whether born of delicate parents or not. Will she grow out of it? The answer to this question is a hopeful one or the reverse just as you choose to make it, young mother.

There is one stumbling-block of which I bid you beware at the very outset of your girl-child’s life. It is the bogey “cold.” That young children need warmth is very true. They are for the time being little hot-house plants, but the sooner you recognise the truth that they are not intended to remain so, the better it will be for yourself, and for the child as well. Those wee things have to be hardened off because the world isn’t a hot-house, and they have got to live hardy, healthy, and therefore happy lives, in spite of the many and daily changes of this changeable climate of ours.

If you desire the wee lassie to grow up as tender as a mushroom and perhaps die just as soon, comparatively, then all you’ve got to do is to permit her to sleep night after night in a badly-ventilated stuffy room and to plot her. The verb “to plot” is essentially Scotch, but as applied to over-coddled children or young canaries or pigeons in a nest that the nervous mother is sweating to death, it is exceedingly expressive. Many of the Scotch words are derived from the French as, in olden times, the two nations were great allies. It would be going a little out of the way perhaps to seek its derivation from sur le plat, on the plate, as an egg when poached. A pig is plotted when boiling water is poured over it in order to get off the bristles easily, the cook plots herself when she gets a splash of hot water over her hands, a boy or man is said to be plotting himself when he wears more clothes than is wanted as a guard against the weather, and babies are all too often plotted in bed or bassinette. The single word “plotted” means sweated, blanched (faire pâlir), poached, all in one. Well, however nice a poached egg may be, poached baby looked at from a doctor’s point of view is very unsatisfactory.

Now just think of the folly, not to say the iniquity, of treating a tender infant as many do. Here lies the mite at the mercy of a mother who may be wise, but who may be otherwise. It is already struggling with the arch-enemy, death. Pray do not misunderstand me: I do not mean to say it is dying, only from the very day we begin to live we begin to die, as it were, at least, to struggle against all that is inimical to life. And life is change, you know, merely that. “I live, therefore I must die.” But we want to keep the spark in this little body, and what is more we want to fan it into health that shall fill every vein and nerve in its body, and produce future health, happiness, and strength. In order to do this, in order to give the child a chance to grow out of its inherited weakness (I do not say “disease,” for that is an ugly word, and quite unnecessary), we must place it under conditions most favourable to existence.