Rough Ways Made Smooth: A series of familiar essays on scientific subjectsProctor, Richard A. (Richard Anthony)
Science
Rough Ways Made Smooth: A series of familiar essays on scientific subjects
Proctor, Richard A. (Richard Anthony)
Science
The senses of taste and smell must also be included in the list of
those which are affected by transmitted peculiarities. If we include
the craving for liquor among such peculiarities, we might at once
cite a long list of cases; but this craving must be regarded as
nervo-psychical, the sense of taste having in reality very little to
do with it. It is doubtful how the following hideous instance should
be classed. It is related by Dr. Lucas. 'A man in Scotland had an
irresistible desire to eat human flesh. He had a daughter; although
removed from her father and mother, who were both sent to the stake
before she was a year old, and although brought up among respectable
people, this girl, like her father, yielded to the horrible craving for
human flesh.' He must be an ardent student of physiological science who
regrets that at this stage circumstances intervened which prevented the
world from ascertaining whether the peculiarity would have descended to
the third and fourth generations.
Amongst the strangest cases of hereditary transmissions are those
relating to handwriting. Darwin cites several curious instances in
his _Variation of Plants and Animals under Domestication_. 'On what
a curious combination of corporeal structure, mental character, and
training,' he remarks, 'must handwriting depend. Yet everyone must have
noted the occasional close similarity of the handwriting in father and
son, even although the father had not taught the son. A great collector
of franks assured me that in his collection there were several franks
of father and son hardly distinguishable except by their dates.'
Hofacker, in Germany, remarks on the inheritance of handwriting, and it
has been even asserted that English boys when taught to write in France
naturally cling to their English manner of writing. Dr. Carpenter
mentions the following instance as having occurred in his own family,
as showing that the character of the handwriting is independent of
the special teaching which the right hand receives in this art:--'A
gentleman who emigrated to the United States and settled in the back
woods, before the end of last century, was accustomed from time to time
to write long letters to his sister in England, giving an account
of his family affairs. Having lost his right arm by an accident, the
correspondence was temporarily kept up by one or other of his children;
but in the course of a few months he learned to write with his left
hand, and before long, the handwriting of the letters thus written came
to be indistinguishable from that of his former letters.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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