disease occurring accidentally during the pregnancy of the mother. Here, then, is a strong practical reason why we should not only be aware of all the sources of infant delicacy, but also be able to discriminate between them in every individual case.

But even supposing, what is not the case, that the children already born are beyond the reach of benefit from the inquiry, it is quite certain that, by improving the health of the parents, the future offspring will participate in their increased vigour, and more easily escape the evils which assail the earlier born. Nor is this the only consideration, important though it be; for parents have an advising and controlling power over the marriages of their children, and by convincing the understandings of the latter, may call into operation, in early life, before the passions become enlisted in the decision, a guiding influence which shall insensibly put them on their guard against forming an alliance with a very unhealthy or defective race. A kind and judicious parent may exercise more influence in this respect than is commonly imagined; and if the young were accustomed to find their parents and guardians acting habitually and consistently under the guidance of principle, they would be much less apt than at present to follow heedlessly the bent of their own passions, in a matter so directly involving their permanent happiness. But when nothing is done, either by example or precept, to put the young on their guard, it is not surprising that mere inclination, family interest, and money, should be more important considerations in forming alliances, than family endowments of mind and body, or soundness of family health; and so long as this shall be the case, so long will much misery continue to be produced, which might otherwise have been foreseen and prevented.

The influence of original constitution on the qualities and health of the progeny, is remarkably shown in the families of some of the reigning princes of Europe, and of our own aristocracy; and is exemplified in the histories of long-lived persons, almost all of whom are found to have been descended from long-lived ancestors; indeed, nothing is more certain than that, other circumstances being favourable, robust and healthy parents have robust and healthy children. The same law, indeed, holds good throughout animated nature. In the vegetable world, for example, quite as much importance is attached to the quality of the seed as to a good soil and good cultivation, and the highest prices are offered to obtain it. Among the lower animals the same principle equally operates. The genealogy of the race-horse, of the hunter, or even of the farm-horse, is looked upon as a sure criterion of the qualities which may be expected in its progeny. In the dog, the sheep, and the different varieties of

cattle, also, we calculate, with perfect certainty, on the reappearance of the qualities of the parents in their young. Man himself, as an organised being, constitutes no exception to the general law, and it is a false and injurious delicacy which would try to divert attention from a truth so influential on happiness, and which has long forced itself upon the notice of physiologists and physicians. In alluding to this subject, the great Haller mentions, that he knew "a very remarkable instance of two noble ladies, who got husbands on account of their wealth, although they were nearly idiots, and from whom this mental defect has extended for a century into several families, so that some of all their descendants still continue idiots in the fourth, and even the fifth generation."* The late Dr. Gregory also graphically describes the same influence of the parental stock, when he says, "Parents frequently live over again in their offspring; for children certainly resemble their parents, not merely in countenance and bodily conformation, but in the general features of their minds, and in both virtues and vices. Thus the imperious Claudian family long flourished at Rome, unrelenting, cruel, and despotic; it produced the merciless and detestable tyrant Tiberius, and at length ended, after a course of six hundred years, in the bloody Caligula, Claudius, and Agrippina, and then in the monster Nero."† Facts of a similar description might easily be multiplied; but as their counterparts may be observed in a more or less marked degree in ordinary society, it is needless to adduce them.

We are perfectly warranted, then, both by experience and reason, in maintaining that the possession on the part of the parents of a sound and vigorous bodily constitution, and an active, well-balanced mind, exerts an important influence in securing similar advantages for the offspring. If either parent inherits the feeble delicacy or mental peculiarities of an unhealthy or eccentric race, the chances are, as we have already seen, very great, that the offspring will be characterised by precisely similar tendencies. But, in compensation for this, the very same law by which the liability to gout, insanity, and consumption, is transmitted from generation to generation, enables us to reckon with equal certainty on the transmission of health and vigour, wherever these have been the hereditary features of the race.

Those, then, who desire bodily and mental soundness in their offspring, ought carefully to avoid intermarrying with individuals who are either feeble in constitution, or strongly predisposed to any

*Elem. Physiol. lib. xxix, sect. 2. 8.

+ Conspectus Medic. Theor. cap. 1, sect. 16.

very serious disease, such as insanity, scrofula, cancer, or consump tion; and above all, the greatest care should be taken against the union of the same predisposition to both father and mother. Where any peculiarity of constitution is confined to one parent, and is not very strong, it may be kept in abeyance by a judicious marriage; but where its influence is aggravated by being common to both parents, the children can scarcely be expected to escape. I am acquainted with families, in which the consequences of acting in opposition to this principle have been not less deplorable than manifest-where several of the children have fallen victims to scrofula and consumption, and others survived in idiocy, induced solely by the imprudent intermarriage of persons nearly allied in blood, and both strongly predisposed to the same form of disease.

In thus insisting on the necessity of greater attention to the law of hereditary predisposition, I do not mean that the actual disease which afflicted the parent will certainly reappear in every one of the offspring; but only that the children of such parents will be much more liable to its invasion than those belonging to a healthier stock, and consequently will require unusual care and good management to protect them against it. One of the chief advantages, indeed, of being aware of the nature and extent of the influence, is the power which it gives us of diminishing its operation by a system of treatment calculated to strengthen the weaker points of the constitution. Thus, if a child inherits a very scrofulous habit from both of its parents, and is brought up under the same circumstances which induced or kept up the disease in them, there is next to a certainty that it will fall a victim to some form or other of scrofulous affection, or will escape only after a long and severe struggle. But if timely precaution is exercised, and the child transferred for a few years to a drier and warmer climate, put on a proper regimen, and kept much in the open air, it may altogether escape the disease, and even enjoy permanently a higher degree of good health than either of its parents ever experienced.

A precisely similar result will follow in other cases of family predisposition. The excitable and capricious children of parents who have been insane, or are strongly predisposed to become so, will run great risk of lapsing into the same state, if brought up under circumstances tending to increase the irritability of the nervous system, and to call their feelings or passions into strong and irregular activity. Of this description, are excessive intellectual exertion, keen competition at school, over-indulgence, capricious contradiction, and confinement in close warm rooms at home. Whereas, if subjected from the first to a mode of treatment calculated to allay nervous irrita

bility, and give tone to the bodily organisation and composure to the mind, the danger in after life may be greatly diminished, and a degree of security enjoyed, which it would otherwise have been impossible to obtain.

It is, then, the predisposition or unusual liability, and not the actual disease, which is thus transmitted from parent to child, and against which we cannot too carefully guard. When we see individual features reappear with striking accuracy in the offspring, we can scarcely doubt that other qualities of a less obvious kind descend with equal regularity.

Next to the direct inheritance of an infirm constitution, that derived from the union of parents too nearly allied in blood is, perhaps, the most prejudicial to infant health, and its baneful effects are no where more strikingly shown than in the deteriorated offspring of some of the royal families of Europe, whose matrimonial choice is greatly more circumscribed than that of their subjects. They are, however, often observed in private life also; where very near relations marry who are themselves infirm, there is usually either no progeny, or one characterised by unusual delicacy of constitution.

The period of life at which the parents marry, exercises a great influence on the health and qualities of the offspring. If the parents have married at a very early age, and before the full developement and maturity of their own organisation, the children are generally more deficient in stamina than those born subsequently and under more favourable circumstances. This, indeed, is one of the reasons why the children of the same family often present considerable differences of constitution and character, and why the first-born is occasionally puny in an otherwise vigorous race. Marriage, therefore, ought never to take place before maturity; because the system is not sufficiently consolidated for the labour of reproduction, and, as a consequence, both parent and child suffer from anticipating the order of nature. In this country, it may be stated as the general rule, that females do not attain their full developement before from twenty to twenty-five years of age, and males between twenty-five and thirty. But, in defiance of this fact, it is not uncommon to encourage a precocious and delicate creature to marry at sixteen or seventeen years of age, at the manifest risk, not only of entailing infirm health upon herself and her future offspring, but of throwing away the best chance of her own permanent happiness.*

* Early marriage and deficient out-door exercise are causes, more powerful than climate, of that early decay of beauty and premature bodily infirmity of our American women, of which it requires not the aid of European travellers to make us sensible.-BELL.

Another cause of infirm health in children, which ought not to be overlooked, is great disparity of years in the two parents. When one of the parents is very young and the other already advanced in life, the constitution of the offspring is very rarely sound; but it is sufficient to call attention to the fact.

Another and very influential source of delicacy in children, is an habitually deteriorated state of health in the parents, not exactly amounting to active disease, but arising chiefly from mismanagement or neglect, and showing itself in a lowered tone of all the animal functions, and a general feeling of not being well. Of all the causes of this description, perhaps the most frequent and deteriorating to the offspring is habitual indigestion. Sir James Clark has shown very clearly, in his admirable work on consumption, that the appearance of scrofula in the families of persons not themselves tainted by it, is generally owing to the hurtful influence of dyspepsia in the parent, brought on and kept in activity by irregularities of regimen. It is in this way that many persons pass years of their lives in a constant state of suffering from "bilious" and "stomach" complaints, induced solely by inattention to diet, exercise, pure air, cleanliness, or other equally removable causes; and unthinkingly turn over a part of the penalty upon their innocent offspring. Not aware of the real consequences of their conduct, they cannot summon resolution to give up the indulgences to which they have accustomed themselves, or to take the little trouble required for the preservation of their own health; and they are surprised when assured, that while thus trifling with their own comfort, they are sporting with the welfare and fate of those on whom their whole affections are one day to be centered. Yet such is the fact!

It is a very common saying, that clever men have generally stupid children, and that those of men of genius are little better than fools; and the inference is drawn, that the constitution of the father has very little influence on that of the children. I admit the fact that the families of men of genius are rarely remarkable for talent; but deduce from it a directly opposite conclusion, and maintain that these very cases are proof of the reality of the father's influence on the constitution of his descendants, and consequently direct warnings for our own guidance. If we consider for a moment the state of health, and general mode of life of men of genius, what can be farther removed from the standard of nature? Are they not, as a race, enthusiastic, excitable, irregular, the sports of every passing emotion, and, almost without exception, martyrs to indigestion and often to melancholy? And are these the seeds from which nature has designed healthy vigour of mind and body to spring up in their