The Neuropathic Diathesis, or the Diathesis of the Degenerate

Abstract

When we examine the purpose and the progress of the animal world from the scientific standpoint, we find that “life is a cycle, beginning in an ovum, and coming round to an ovum again,” and the history of the human race, the failures and triumphs of nations, the loves and hates, the baseness and nobility of individuals, appear to be “the mere by-play of ovum bearing organisms.” Whatever other purpose is served by our existence, we are certainly placed here to reproduce our kind, and to furnish human figures to play their part in the next scene of the perpetual panorama of life. Moreover, we make man in our own image, after our likeness, and endow him with the characteristics we have inherited from our ancestors, and with those which we have created, for good or evil, in our own life. One of the oldest of books teaches us that the sins of the fathers will be visited upon the children to the third and fourth generations, and we might go further and say that physiological sins will penalize the race for many generations, and even lead to its utter extinction, unless counteracted by the strong antidotes of physiological morality, perfect hygienic conditions, and judicious intermarriage with untainted breeds.