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
These morbid manifestations of heredity occur in certain categories,
either local as to organs or structures, or affecting the body as a whole.
These categories Moreau (de Tours) lucidly sums up as: First, absence of
conception; second, retardation of conception; third, imperfect
conception; fourth, incomplete products (monstrosities); fifth, products
whose mental, moral, and physical constitution is imperfect; sixth,
products specially exposed to nervous disorders in order of frequency as
follows--epilepsy, imbecility or idiocy, deaf-mutism, insanity, cerebral
paralysis, and other cerebral disorders; seventh, lymphatic products;
eighth, products which die in infancy in a greater proportion than sound
infants under like conditions; ninth, products which, although they escape
the stress of infancy, are less adapted than others to resist disease and
death.
The explanation of these morbid manifestations lies in the very
foundations of embryology. Bearing in mind the principles of individuation
pointed out by Spencer, it is easily understood how reversal of this
principle would produce greater and greater destruction of the complex
functions, resultant on increased reproductive power of cells (whose
environment is not suited to such reproductions) and thus lead to such a
struggle for existence as to produce sterility (from interdestruction of
the ovum cells, or the cells forming the spermatozoon). This condition is
further increased by the operation of two biologic principles. The first
relates to the cells or organs forming an organism. The second, as Von
Baer has shown, deals with the relation of the organs to each other.
Vertebrate embryos of a common type, at their origin, assume successively
a number of common forms before definitely differentiating. Dareste points
out that supernumerary organs do exist in these common forms at one phase
of embryonic life. This community of embryonic types and this last fact
explain repetition of teratologic types or monstrosities in vertebrates.
This community of origin, moreover, indicates that a higher vertebrate
embryo contains in essence the organs and potentialities of lower
vertebrates, and that under the influence of heredity or accidental defect
an organ belonging to another species may develop, or an organ constant in
a species may be lacking in an individual, without the necessity of
explaining the immediate effects by distant atavism. Some anomalies found
among degenerates recall types less elevated than man, and very distant
from him, even his possible Lemurian precursor.
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