Great disturbances in the expectant mother's health also have their effect upon the child. The erroneous idea that there is no life before the third or fifth month allows many conscientious women to attempt measures that will cause the discharge of the products of conception. These measures not only are dangerous to the health or the life of the woman but, in the event of their proving unsuccessful, may result in the birth of a deformed or a mentally defective child. Parents who have become degenerate from the immoderate use of alcohol or other stimulants or those who are afflicted with one of the black plagues furnish further examples of the birth of deficient offspring. The question of heredity has received considerable attention during recent years. As a result, many of our pet theories have undergone a decided change. Many of the diseases which formerly were thought to be acquired through inheritance we now know to be contracted through lack of care or through association. The only inheritance is possibly a tendency to the disease or a decrease in the power of resistance. It is a law of pathology that the diseases of parents who suffer from certain serious chronic maladies create in the offspring a condition of defective life shown in malformations or in altered nutrition. The hereditary influence of most diseases is shown in the transmission to the child of a defective body shown by feebleness or a diminished power of resisting disease. In tuberculosis and other diseases that once were considered hereditary, this influence is shown probably only in a predisposition to the disease which under favorable circumstances finds an easy condition of growth. The child does not actually inherit the disease and if placed in favorable surroundings will outgrow the tendency, will overcome the feeble vitality. But such a child if allowed to remain with its parent, to breathe the germs of disease cast off by the parent, readily contracts the disease. For the sake of the child it must be separated from its tubercular parent. It must be given fresh air and nourishing food.