Degeneracy: Its Causes, Signs and Results — John Shaqi
Degeneracy: Its Causes, Signs and ResultsTalbot, Eugene S. (Eugene Solomon)
History
Degeneracy: Its Causes, Signs and Results
Talbot, Eugene S. (Eugene Solomon)
Abnormalities, Human; Degeneration; Heredity, Human
Manifestations of morbid heredity result not in inheritance of the whole
defect but in disturbance of relations of structure and hence of function,
producing, as Kiernan remarks, a constitutional deficiency which takes the
line of least resistance. The extent and direction of this line of least
resistance depend on the amount of healthy atavism which separate organs
and structures of the body preserve. The line of least resistance
sometimes taken is excellently illustrated in the occurrence of stigmata
already pointed out in the case of epileptic guinea-pigs.
This unilateral predisposition (which, as Kiernan has shown, is due
usually to heredity or intra-uterine causes) may be artificially
produced. Kasparek[88] cut one sciatic nerve of a guinea-pig and (after
all inflammatory symptoms had subsided) injected the opposite ear with
cultures of pus microbes. He killed the animal after some days. The sound
side was found free from suppuration, but immense abscesses existed on the
side of the cut nerve. Such local predisposition was pointed out by
Merrill[89] over forty years ago. This condition occurs, as Féré has
shown,[90] in many systemic and infectious diseases which presents a
localisation due to heredity, or determined by anterior morbid state of
the nervous symptom. Sometimes these manifestations are limited to the
side free from nervous trouble.
As a rule they attack the side which is the predominant seat of nervous
symptoms. Féré points out that in chromatic iris asymmetry the iris
(coloured part of the eye) is most coloured on the side most affected by
arrest of development. Localisation of nervous trouble occurs on the side
most affected by hare-lip. Heuse has observed the co-existence on the same
side of congenital cataract and of deformities of the skull and chest.
Hernia is often an expression of hereditary defect (Le Double) taking the
unilateral line of least resistance. Testicle inflammations of microbic
origin (venereal or otherwise) occur as a rule on the side where hernia is
located in the groin. In one-sided malformations of ovary or testicle
(decreased or increased in size, or changed in shape or location) microbe
inflammation almost always occurs at the seat of the anomaly. This
principle is illustrated in the experiments of Dupuy.[91] Here, while as a
rule, the scions of guinea-pigs (rendered epileptic by section of the
sciatic nerve) were epileptics and had deficient toes, still in some
epilepsy resulted without the toe anomaly, while still more rarely the toe
anomaly was present without the epilepsy.
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