ISO NATURAL INHERITANCE. [CHAP.
power of the mother over that of the father to produce a highly consumptive family. Any physician in large practice among consumptive cases could test the question easily by reference to his note-books. A " liighly consumptive " fraternity may conveniently be defined as one in which at least half of its members have actually died of consumption, or else are so stricken that their ultimate deaths from that disease may be reckoned upon. Also to avoid statistical accidents, the fraternities selected for the inquiry should be large, consisting say of six children and upwards. Of course the numerical proportions given by the above 14 fraternities are very rude indications indeed of the results to which a thorough inquiry might be expected to lead.
Accepting the general truth of the observation that consumptive mothers produce highly consumptive families much more commonly than consumptive fathers, it is easy to offer what seems to be an adequate explanation. Consumption is partly acquired by some form of contagion. or infection, and is partly an hereditary malformation. So far as it is due to the latter in the wide sense already given to the word " malformation," it may perhaps be transmissible equally by either parent. But so far as it is contagious or infectious, we must recollect that the child is peculiarly exposed during all the time of its existence before birth, to contagion from its mother. During infancy, it lies perhaps for hours daily in its mother's arms, and afterwards, lives much by her side, closely caressed, and breathing the tainted air of her sheltered
