The sexual question : $b A scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological studyForel, Auguste
Science
The sexual question : $b A scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study
Forel, Auguste
Sex
Blastophthoria deranges the mneme or hereditary engrams, and
consequently a more or less considerable part of their ecphorias
during the life of the individuals which arise from them. It is not a
question here of the reproduction of the hereditary ancestral energies
in the descendants (in different combinations) as is the case in the
heredity which we have just studied, but, on the contrary, a question
of their perturbation. However, the store of cells reserved as
germinal cells in the embryo, the germ of which has been damaged by
blastophthoric action, being usually also affected by the disturbing
cause, it follows that the pathological change introduced by
blastophthoria in the hereditary mneme is transmitted to the
descendants by ordinary heredity. In this way blastophthoria deposits
the first germ of most pathological degenerations by causing immediate
deviation of all the determinants of the germ in the same direction.
The most typical and the commonest example of blastophthoria is that
of alcoholic intoxication. The spermatozoa of alcoholics suffer like
the other tissues from the toxic action of alcohol on the protoplasm.
The result of this intoxication of the germs may be that the children
resulting from their conjugation become idiots, epileptics, dwarfs or
feeble minded. Thus it is not alcoholism or the craving for drink
which is inherited. No doubt the peculiarity of badly supporting
alcohol is inherited by ordinary heredity as a hereditary disposition,
but it is not this which produces the alcoholic degenerations of the
race. These are the result of the single blastophthoria. When, on the
other hand, a man is found to be imbecile or epileptic as the result
of the insobriety of his father, he preserves the tendency to transmit
his mental weakness or his epilepsy to his descendants, even when he
abstains completely from alcoholic drinks. In fact, the chromosomes of
the spermatozoid, from which about a half of his organism has issued,
have preserved the pathological derangement produced by the parental
alcoholism in their hereditary mneme, and have transmitted it to the
store of germinal cells of the feeble minded or the epileptic, who in
his turn transmits it to his descendants. From _Weismann's_ point of
view his hereditary determinants remain pathologically deviated. All
intoxications which alter the protoplasm of the germinal cells may
produce blastophthoric degenerations, which continue to menace several
successive generations in the form of hereditary taints.
Other deviations in the development of the germs may act in an
analogous manner to blastophthoria. We have mentioned above the
experiments of _Merrifield_ and _Standfuss_ on the caterpillars of
certain butterflies. Without being really of a pathological nature,
these actions of a physical agent on the hereditary energies resemble
blastophthoria.
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