These stimulating researches into the sources of crime led to a controversy which reached its height two decades ere the treatise of Morel. To this controversy three suggestive works owed their origin: a psychological treatise by Dr. Lauvergne[14]on felons, a romance with a purpose by Eugène Sue,[15]and a suggestively practical brochure by a rather corrupt police official, Vidocq.[16]Seemingly conflicting as were these productions, all strikingly illustrated the influence of heredity and environment in the production of defectives. To these productions were soon added those of Moreau (de Tours),[17]Attemyer, Eliza Farnham,[18]the American Sampson,[19]Dally, Lélut, Camper, and the older Voisin.
Morel[20]laid the foundation of what is widely known as the Lombroso School by a brochure wherein he proposed to entitle morbid anthropology, “that part of the science of man the aim of which is to study phenomena due to morbid influences and to malign heredity.”
To the factor of atavism, inconsistently ignored by Morel, the early embryologic studies of Von Baer and the biologic studies resultant on the transmutation of species lent special emphasis. Three possibilities of life await, as Wilson[21]remarks, each living being: either it remains primitive and unchanged, or it progresses toward a higher type, or it backslides and retrogresses. The factors underlying the stable state force the animal to remain as it is; those underlying the progressive tendency make it more elaborate, while the factors of degeneration, on the other hand, tend to simplify its structure. It requires no special thought to perceive that progress is a great fact of nature. The development of every animal and plant shows the possibilities of nature in this direction. But the bearings of physiological backsliding are not so clearly seen.
That certain animals degenerate or retrogress in their development is susceptible of ready and familiar illustration. No better illustration is needed than is derived from the domain of parasitic existence. When an animal or plant attaches itself partly or wholly to another living being, and becomes more or less dependent upon the latter for support and nourishment, it exhibits, as a rule, retrogression and degeneration. The parasitic “guest” dependent onits “host” for lodging alone, or it may be for both board and lodging, is in a fair way to become degraded in structure, and, as a rule, exhibits marked degradation where the association has persisted sufficiently long. Parasitism and servile dependence act very much in structural lower life as analogous instances of mental dependence on others act on man.
The destruction of characteristic individuality and the extinction of personality are natural results of that form of association wherein one form becomes absolutely dependent on another for all the conditions of life. A life of mere attachment exhibits similar results, and organs of movement disappear by the law of disuse. A digestive system is a superfluity to an animal which, like the tapeworm, obtains its food ready made in the very kitchen, so to speak, of its host. Hence the lack of digestive apparatus follows the finding of a free commissariat by the parasite. Organs of sense are not necessary for an attached and rooted animal; these latter, therefore, go by the board and the nervous system itself becomes modified and altered. Degradation wholesale and complete is the penalty the parasite has to pay for its free board and lodging; and in this fashion Nature may be said to revenge the host for the pains and troubles wherewith, like Job of old, he may be tormented.
The most emphatic biologic degeneration is that discovered by Kowalevsky[22]in the sea squirt, which, in its larval state, is a vertebrate, and when adult is an ascidian, seemingly far below the cuttlefish and the worms. This strikingly illustrates that, as Ray Lankester[23]has said, degeneration is a gradual change of structure by which the organism becomes adaptedto less varied and less complex conditions of life; a reverse of evolution which proceeds from the indefinite and homogeneous to the definite and heterogeneous with a loss of explosive force due to the acquirement of inhibitions or checks.
This principle of biologic degeneration, long recognised, was most lucidly enforced by Dohrn[24], whose views were later extended by Ray Lankester. The parallelism of animal degeneracy with that of man, so clearly evident even in the parasitic nature of defectives, was, as Meynert[25]showed, due to the fact that the fore-brain is an inhibitory apparatus against the lower and more instinctive natural impulses. The higher its development the greater is the tendency to subordinate the particular to the general. Even in insects a high social growth occurs, as in the bee and ant communities. The same is the case in the development of man; in the infant, a being entirely wrapped in its instincts of self-preservation, the “primary ego” is predominant and the child is an egotistic parasite. As development goes on this standpoint is passed, conscience assumes its priority, the fore-brain acts as a check on the purely vegetative functions and the “secondary ego” takes precedence over the primary one; this is the general order of society, designated as civilisation or social order. If this inhibition become weakened or disordered, predominance of the natural instincts or impulses occurs, and when it is totally lost the individual is in the position of a criminal who opposes the ethical order of society—a parasite, and one of the worst kind who not only lives upon his host but destroys him in doing so.
Hence degenerate tendencies are reversions in type indicating the original source of the inhibition.
The tree of Moreau[26]illustrates clearly the essential principles of these inter-relations of defect, further elucidated by the observations of Sander[27]on the connection of deformed central nervous systems with mental and moral disorder.
NERVOUS HEREDITY.
The extensive studies of Niepce,[28]Vogt,[29]and others on idiot biology sought to show that the brain was not merely arrested in development, but sometimes reverted even as low as the sauropsida type (reptiles and birds). Grohmann,[30]as early as 1820, had “often been impressed in criminals, especially in those of defective development, by the prominent ears, the shape of the cranium, the projecting cheek-bones, the large lower jaws, the deeply placed eyes, the shifty, animal-like gaze.”
Maudsley[31]observes that in the case of such an extreme morbid variety as a congenital idiot we have to do with a defective nervous organisation. Marchand, in the brain of two idiots of European descent, found the convolutions fewer in number, individually less complex, broader and smoother than in the apes. The condition results neither from atrophy nor mere arrest of growth, but consists essentially in an imperfect evolution of the cerebral hemispheres or their parts, dependent on an arrest of development. The proportion of the weight of brain to that of body is extraordinarily diminished. With the brain of the orang type comes a corresponding defect of function. With this animal type of brain in idiocy sometimes appear animal traits and instincts. One class of idiots is justly designated theroid, so brute-like are its members.
The human brain in the course of fœtal development passes through the same stages as other vertebrate brains, and to some extent these transitional stages resemble the permanent forms of their brain. Summing up, as it were, in itself the leading formsof vertebrate type, there is truly a brute brain within the man’s, and when the latter stops short of its characteristic development, it is natural that it should manifest only its most primitive functions.
It must, however, be pointed out that the human brain, even of the idiot or microcephales, never resembles,as a whole, the brain of any anthropoid or lower animal form. Such a position was maintained by Vogt, but has long since been abandoned. The existing anthropoid apes are not the ancestors of man, and have pursued a different development.[32]
Despine’s[33]researches revealed the absence of human checks on the instinctive tendencies in criminals. He, however, started from the doctrine of moral imbecility as elaborated by Rush, Prichard, Brigham, Ray, Galt, and others. Bruce Thomson,[34]testing Despine’s results by primitive races and Scotch criminals, found that defective, abnormal, and anomalous states of the instinctive faculties exist in entire races and in the “moral idiots” that occur in the best races. Criminals form a variety of the human family quite distinct from law-abiding men. A low type of physique indicating a deteriorated character gives a family likeness due to the fact that they form a community which retrogrades from generation to generation. The low physical condition of juvenile criminals in reformatories, &c., becomes at once obvious if they be compared with healthy, active school children. They are puny, sickly, scrofulous, often deformed, with peculiar, unnaturally developed heads, sluggish, stupid, liable to fits, meanin figure, and defective in vital energy, while at the same time they are irritable, violent, and too often quite incorrigible. The adults usually have a singularly stupid and insensate look. The complexion is bad. The outlines of the head are harsh and angular. The boys are ugly in feature, and have, as a rule, repulsive appearances. These diseases of criminals are a proof of their low type and deteriorated condition. Their deaths are mainly due to tubercular diseases and affections of the nervous system. In the greater number crime is hereditary, a tendency which is, in most cases, associated with bodily defect, such as spinal deformities, stammering or other imperfect speech, club-foot, cleft-palate, hare-lip, deformed jaws and teeth, deaf-mutism, congenital blindness, paralysis, epilepsy, and scrofula.
Elisha Harris,[35]of New York, among 233 convicts found 54 to belong to families in which insanity, epilepsy, and other neuroses existed. Eighty-three per cent. belonged to a criminal, pauper, or inebriate stock, and were, therefore, hereditarily or congenitally affected. Nearly 76 per cent. of their number hence proved habitual criminals. According to Harris, crime, pauperism, and insanity revert into each other, so that insanity in the parent produces crime or pauperism in the offspring, or,vice versâ, crime or pauperism in the parent produces disease or insanity in the offspring. Campagne, Broca, G. Wilson, and others about the same time made similar researches.
The American sociologist, Samuel Royce, after a careful study of American and European defective classes,[36]found that observation of the hereditarynature of pauperism which congenitally reverts into insanity, disease or crime, leaves no doubt but that pauperism is one of the worst forms of race deterioration, and that the paralysis of the human will and its energies is but the result of a fearful dissolution in progress.
Extensive researches made by Charles S. Hoyt,[37]of the New York State Board of Charities (1874), into the origin of the defective classes of that state, show that the pauper, hysteric, epileptic, prostitute, criminal, born-blind, deaf-mute, paranoiac, recurrent lunatic and idiot were buds of the same tree of degenerate heredity. E. C. Spitzka,[38]basing his researches on the principles of Morel as expanded and critically applied by Meynert,[39]reached essentially the same results as also did Westphal, Krafft-Ebing, Grille, Kerlin, Axel Key, Magnan, Foville, Bjornstrom, Amadei, Schüle, Nicolson,[40]Tonnini, Tamburini, Verga, Tamassia, Kowalevsky, and it may be said the German Psychiatrical Society (which, by accepting a conception of the distortion of mental faculties otherwise seemingly high, based on brain deformity rather than disease, accepted the degeneracy doctrine of to-day).
For several decades, moreover, the stigmata of degeneracy have appeared in French, German, Austrian, Russian, Italian, and Scandinavian court reports as evidence of hereditary defects.
As often happens in science—
“Thought by thought is piled till some great truthIs loosened and the nations echo round.”
Wherefore about this period (1870-78) appeared the first volume of the epoch-making work of Cesare Lombroso,[41]who, erroneously credited with being the apostle of the modern doctrine of degeneracy, has admittedly done more to stimulate research than any other investigator. This work exerted an influence at first in Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, and the Scandinavian countries, while on the English-speaking countries, despite the apparently fertile soil prepared for it, its influence was seemingly slight. Under the degradation produced in many American charitable and correctional institutions by corruption, naturally resultant on a civil war, science therein was at a decided discount between 1861 and 1881. A school arose which, defying the individualistic rule of English common law underlying the institutions of the United States, pandered to mob-law and theologic prejudice by denying certain well-ascertained facts in human degeneracy. This school, represented at the Guiteau trial by the experts for the prosecution, denied heredity and that moral defect could result from physical abnormality. This school, however, was by no means representative of American psychiatry or sociology. Rush, Brigham, James MacDonald, Gait, McFarland, W. W. Godding, Ray, C. H. Hughes, Kerlin, Patterson, Wilbur, Fisher, J. H. McBride, C. H. Nichols, C. A. Folsom, Cowles, and others accepted Morel’s principles. Spitzka,[42]long ere the trial, pointed out that criminals displayed the stigmata of Morel, and that the more intellectual types of insanity were based on brain deformity rather than disease.
Benedikt,[43]of Vienna, in 1879 stated that “criminals generally have nothing analogous to monomaniacs. They tend to develop distinct peculiarities of organisation and psychic features, and these peculiarities are the product of their social condition.” J. G. Kiernan,[44]reviewing his work, remarked that any one who had at all examined the question would be convinced that between the true criminal type, the imbecile and the paranoiac (primäre verrückt) the psychological relations and their anatomical bases are intimate and close. Had Benedikt examined the insane and criminals, not for convolutional aberrations alone, but also for heterotopias, &c., he would never have written the sentence just quoted.
W. W. Godding,[45]commenting on the evidence of J. P. Gray,[46]the leader of the American school that denies degeneracy, feelingly remarked that “the disordered mind does not cease to be a unit although the observed manifestations of its insanity may seem to be confined in some cases to the emotion; in others to the affection; and in still others to the intellectual powers. We cannot deny that the old masters were as keen-sighted observers as ourselves. I dislike to hear drunkenness called dipsomania, as I so often do; but I do not therefore say that dipsomania is only drunkenness. It might improve my standing with the legal fraternity if I should pronounce kleptomania only another name for stealing, but my personal observations convince me that the insane have sometimes a disposition to steal, which is a direct result of their disease, and for which they areno more accountable than the puerperal maniac is for her oaths.
“And now, after all these years of careful research, and our asylum reports[47]rendered bulky with long tables prepared with so much care, involving inquiry on the origin of the disease not alone in the direct family line, but in the collateral branches also; just when the medical profession has come to believe that if one fact in medical science be better established than another, it is that insanity is hereditary, and we undertake in the present case to look up hereditary predisposition, and the family disposition likewise, we are met with the withering conundrum, ‘Can a man inherit insanity from his uncle?’ and we are told that there is no such thing as hereditary insanity. Yes, gentlemen, I understand you; the tendency to the disease is inherited. And so in the strict use of language there is no such thing as insane delusion; but we know that language is seldom used with scientific exactness, and no one is at a loss to understand what we mean when we say that Jones is full of insane delusions, insanity being hereditary in his family. Yes, and if Jones should marry an insane woman, the chances are good that Jones’s son will turn out crazy, no matter how carefully he may be brought up under the direction of the most eminent psychist, for that little germ which you call ‘a tendency’—so minute that it will elude your most careful scrutiny with scalpel and microscope—is a fixed fact, and will prove more potent than all theories. Not born there; develops. Ah, how is it that science shows us that syphilis and small-poxand tubercle are born in the offspring, that the infant comes into the world with spina bifida, idiotic, hydrocephalic, acephalic, that the child is blind and mute and misshapen in his mother’s womb, but is never insane? Because, forsooth, we have seen fit to limit insanity to disease of the brain, and disease is not inherited. Is it possible that in all these years it has not been Dr. Gray’s lot as it has been mine to be consulted about those ‘queer’ children of insane parentage, who are perverse from the start? Will he say that the perverseness is only a ‘badness’ which should be whipped out of the child? But that has generally been thoroughly tried before the physician is consulted. Heterodox I know it is, but observed facts compel me to be heterodox with Prichard and Esquirol and Ray, with Morel and Griesinger and Maudsley, and I know not how many others, in recognising in some cases a condition of inherent defect born in the individual, and not a result of education—a condition which writers have recognised under various names as hereditary mental disorder, insane diathesis, insane temperament.”
The Guiteau trial so stimulated studies of degeneracy that two experts for the prosecution, A. McL. Hamilton[48]and H. M. Stearns,[49]later changed their views as to degeneracy, while C. L. Dana, a strong supporter of the Gray school in 1881, subsequently made valuable contributions to the literature of the degeneracy stigmata. The position then taken by Spitzka and Kiernan as to the cerebral basis of degeneracy was in 1882 supported by H. Howard,[50]of Montreal; Workman,[51]of Toronto; Kerlin,[52]of Pennsylvania; Osler,[53]of Baltimore; and C. K. Mills,[54]of Philadelphia.
It was during 1881, moreover, that Jacobi made extensive studies of degeneracy in royalty and aristocracy,[55]as earlier had Ireland.[56]
From the time of Itard degenerate phenomena in idiots had been traced to cerebral mal-development. Kerlin[57]pointed out that “epileptic change” in them was marked by moral alteration similar in explosive characters to that so frequently observed in criminals. In England students of idiocy like Clouston, Shuttleworth, Beach, Ireland, Langdon Down, and others, had early brought the recognition of its inter-relations with insanity, crime and neuroses into strong relief. To the studies of Bruce Thomson, Maudsley, and Nicolson, Tyndall[58]gave strong support from the actual experience of a governor of a great British prison, who found that the prisoners in his charge might be divided into three distinct classes: the first class consisted of persons who ought never to have been in prison; external accident and not internal taint had brought them within the grasp of the law, and what had happened to them might happen to most of us; they were essentially men of sound moral stamina, though wearing the prison garb. Then came the largest class, formed of individuals possessing no strong bias, moral or immoral, plastic to the touch of circumstances which would mould theminto either good or evil members of society. Thirdly, came a class, happily not a large one, whom no kindness could conciliate and no discipline tame. They were sent into the world labelled “incorrigible,” wickedness being stamped, as it were, upon their organisation.
With the close of the year 1883 the degeneracy doctrine may be regarded as having practically been accepted in biology, in anthropology, in sociology, in criminology, in psychiatry, and general pathology. Debate was henceforth not as to its existence, but as to its limitations. Precedent to 1835 determinism in popular thought due to Calvinistic predestination had, in English-speaking countries, fought for the doctrine; subsequent thereto the theologic reaction against Calvinism was a strong opposing force, whose influence was finally destroyed by the practically general acceptance of the doctrine of evolution in the late seventies.
The Stigmata of Degeneracy
Theattempt made by Morel to limit the doctrine of degeneracy to the domain of the morbid proved impossible, because of the rapid accumulation of data by his own school, which demonstrated that atavistic deformity played a larger part in the production of diseases. Bland Sutton does not too forcibly put this result when he states[59]that if it be difficult to define disease when restricted to the human family, it becomes obviously more difficult when disease is investigated on a broad biological basis. As the great barrier which exists between man and those members of his class most closely allied to him consists not in structural characters but in mental power, it necessarily follows that there should be a similarity in the structural alterations induced by diseased conditions in all kinds of animals, allowing of course for the difference in environment. This is known to be the case, and it is clear that as there has been a gradual evolution of complex from simple organisms, it necessarily follows that the principles of evolution ought to apply to diseased conditions if they hold good for the normal or healthy states or organism; in plainwords, there has been an evolution of diseasepari passuwith evolution of animal forms. For a long time it has been customary to talk of physiologic types of diseased tissues; Sutton’s earlier efforts were directed to searching among animals for the purpose of detecting in them the occurrence of tissues, which in man are only found under abnormal conditions. The statement proved to be true in a limited sense. At the same time the truth of an opinion held by nearly all thoughtful physicians, that disease may in many instances be regarded as an exaggerated function, was forcibly illustrated; the manifestations of disease were found to be regulated by the same law which governs physiological processes in general, and many conditions regarded as pathological in one animal were revealed as physiological in another.
The doctrine, therefore, has its scope limited only by biologic data. It of necessity begins with the cell itself in its relation to other cells of that practically compound organism which constitutes a single vertebrate. The cell may, therefore, degenerate as a single member of that organism, producing danger or benefit to the other cells. Thus the cancer cell degenerates in its power of reproduction below the tissue to which it belongs. It is peculiarly true here, as has been said by Herbert Spencer, that every vertebrate is an aggregate whose internal actions are adapted to counterbalance its external actions; hence the preservation of its movable equilibrium depends upon its development and the proper number of these actions; the movable equilibrium may be ruined when one of these actions is too great or too small, and through deficiency or need of some organic or inorganic cause in its surroundings. Every individualcan adapt itself to these changeable influences in two ways, either directly or by producing new individuals who will take the place of those whom the equilibrium has destroyed. Therefore there exist forces preservative and destructive of the race. As it is impossible that these two kinds of force should counterbalance each other, it is necessary that the equilibrium should re-establish itself in an orderly way. Since there are two preservative forces of every animal group—the impulse of every individual to self-preservation and the impulse to the production of other individuals—these faculties must vary in an inverse ratio; the former must diminish when the second augments. Degeneration constitutes a process of disintegration, the reverse of integration. Hence, if the term individuation be applied to all the processes which complete and sustain the life of the individual, and that of generation to those which aid the formation and development of new individuals, individuation and generation are necessarily antagonistic.
In the phenomena of unisexual generation we see that the larger organisms never reproduce themselves in the unisexual way, while the smaller organisms reproduce themselves with the greatest rapidity by this method. Between these two extremes unisexual reproduction decreases while the size increases. In the history of all plants and animals is evident the physiologic truth, that while the general growth of the individual proceeds rapidly, the reproductive organs remain imperfectly developed and inactive. On the contrary, the principle of reproduction indicates decrease in the intensity of growth and becomes a cause of cessation.
Great fecundity is always attended by great mortality. Each superior degree of organic evolution is accompanied by an inferior degree of fecundity. The greater the germs the less is the individuation, andvice versâ. The greater and more complex the organisation, the less is the power of multiplication.
What is true of the cells is also true of organs composed of them. Each organ can be regarded as a distinct animal (a parasite is preferable for comparison) which has its own nervous system (the ganglia), but is fed and controlled by the organism as a whole. Degeneration of this organ may therefore be an expression of a local state peculiar to it and either beneficial or maleficent, or both in inverse degree, to the organism as a whole, or it may be the expression of a general defect in the whole organism. The sclerotic states of the appendix vermiformis in man and of the human liver are, as Kiernan has shown, two excellent illustrations of the degeneracies last described. Man, in common with the four anthropoid apes, has a little thin tube attached to the cæcum known as the appendix vermiformis. In the early embryo it is equal in calibre to the other bowels, but ceases to grow proportionately after a certain time. In the new-born child it is almost as large as in the adult. As this tube proved disadvantageous to man’s precursor (as it does to certain mammals) from catching foreign bodies which form the nucleus of enteroliths or bowel stones, it has lost the nutritive supply of the other intestines and is tending to disappear. It is often absent in man. The defect in its structure, while predisposing to the attacks of germs and an expression of its own degeneracy, is an evidence of an advance in evolution in the organismas a whole by which great danger and waste of nutritive force are avoided.
Recent researches[60]have shown that “hob-nail” liver, once supposed to be due entirely to abuse of alcohol, usually occurs in states of congenital deficiency in persons of defective heredity. The change in the appendix which is tending to cause its disappearance is essentially a sclerosis, and hence is morbid, considered from the appendix standpoint alone. As the same process occurs in “hob-nail” liver, it is obvious that degeneracy may be an expression of general advance and local defect or may be a local expression of general defect. The same phenomenon is seen in the nervous system. The researches of Cunningham[61]have shown that in man the struggle for existence between the sympathetic and the cerebro-spinal system has ended in the victory of the latter, while the first is tending to disappear. Such changes must necessarily result in local degeneracies which are for the benefit of the organism as a whole. Degeneracy on this basis may express itself in simple disturbance of the lower or nutritive functions. The uric acid or gouty states, for example, are, as Fothergill long ago pointed out, assumptions by mammalian organs of the functions of those of birds and reptiles. In conditions like myxœdema the skin, through thyroid gland disturbances, takes on features which resemble in result those found in certain mollusks and low fish. These nutritive disturbances may show themselves in disorders of the pituitary body (acromegaly, giantism, &c.), whereby the bony system of man reverts to conditions like those of the gorilla. The same conditionsalso appear in the diathesis of the “bleeders.” All these conditions, however, may be an expression of a degenerate type assuming a normal equilibrium, as well as of a normal organism taking the first steps in degeneracy.
In a general way, therefore, as Dohrn has pointed out, this principle holds good of man not only as an organic unit but as a compound organism. Degeneracy[62]is a gradual change of structures by which the organism becomes adapted to less varied and less complex conditions of life. The opposite progression process of elaboration is a gradual change of structure in which the organism becomes adapted to more and more varied and complex conditions of existence. In elaboration there is a new expression of form corresponding to new perfection of work in the animal machine. In degeneracy there is suppression of form corresponding to the cessation of work. Elaboration of some one organ may be a necessary accompaniment of degeneracy in all the others. This is very generally the case. Only when the total result of the elaboration of some organs, and the degeneracy of others, is such as to leave the whole mass in a lower condition—that is, fitted to less complex action and reaction in regard to its surroundings than is the type—can the individual be regarded as an instance of degeneracy. These degeneracies appear at varying periods, since struggles for existence on the part of the different organs and systems of the body are most ardent during periods of body evolution and involution. During fœtal life, during the first dentition, during the second dentition (often as late as the thirteenth year), during pubertyand adolescence (fourteen to twenty-five), during the climacteric (forty to sixty), when uterine involution occurs in woman and prostatic involution in man, and finally during senility (sixty and upwards), during all these periods degeneracy may be shown by mental or physical defect, a congenital tendency to which has remained latent until the period of stress. These defects may be such biochemic alterations (undemonstrable by existing methods) as lead to diminished inhibitory power or other altered function, or to secondary pathologic or teratologic change of decidedly demonstrable nature. Organs and structures checked at a certain phase of development may pursue a course of development differing from that pointed out in man but outlined in other vertebrates. The human cyclopean monstrosities, for example, might be regarded as reversions to the single-eyed sea-squirts, who are possibly the Ascidian precursors of the vertebrates.
The scope of degeneracy may therefore be limited to certain signs which are its sole expressions. These signs (stigmata as they were early called) may be the only expression of degeneracy, and their significance must be determined by a careful examination of the organism in which these expressions are found, since they may be merely defects produced by degeneracy, or may indicate how deep such degeneracy has penetrated. They may, therefore, indicate either slight or serious defect. In proportion to the depth of degeneracy in the organism will the stigmata affect the earlier simpler or later complicated acquisitions through evolution. Of necessity, when the organism is affected by degeneracy, the morbid element will take the line of least resistance, determinedby the depth of degeneracy as well as the variability of the structures concerned. The same influence must equally affect functions of the structures. Furthermore, expressions of degeneracy will, as already stated, be influenced by the periods of stress; the first and second dentition, puberty, the climacteric and the senile period. In a general way these stigmata are divisible into mental and physical, and are best observable in their relations to the periods of stress. In certain races, as in certain animals, conditions appearing before puberty was completed cannot be considered as settling the position of the animal in evolution. What is true of individuals is also true of classes. The anthropoid apes and the negroes are much higher in physical characteristics, with potential mental results, before puberty than after. The infant ape, as Havelock Ellis[63]points out, is very much nearer to man than the adult ape. “The infant ape is higher in the line of evolution than the adult, and the female ape, by approximating to the infant type, is somewhat higher than the male. Man, in carrying on the line of evolution, started not from some adult male simian, but from the infant ape and, in a less degree, from the female ape. The human infant bears precisely the same relation to his species as the simian infant bears to his, and we are bound to conclude that his relation to the future evolution of the race is similar. The human infant presents, in an exaggerated form, the chief distinctive characteristics of humanity—the large head and brain, the small face, the hairlessness, the delicate bony system. By some strange confusion of thought we usually ignore this fact, andassume that the adult form is more highly developed than the infantile form. From the point of view of adaptation to the environment, it is undoubtedly true that the coarse, hairy, large-boned and small-brained gorilla is better fitted to make his way in the world than his delicate offspring; but from a zoological point of view we witness anything but progress. In man, from about the third year onwards, further growth—though an absolutely necessary adaptation to the environment—is to some extent growth in degeneration and senility. It is not carried to so low a degree as in the apes, although by it man is to some extent brought nearer to the apes, and among the higher human races the progress towards senility is less marked than among the lower human races. The child of many African races is scarcely, if at all, less intelligent than the European child, but while the African as he grows up becomes stupid and obtuse, and his whole social life falls into a state of hide-bound routine, the European retains much of his childlike vivacity. And if we turn to what we are accustomed to regard as the highest human types, as represented in men of genius, we shall find a striking approximation to the child type.” The face, in its contest for existence with the brain, has finally caused both the cranium and the jaws to assume (for defence and food purposes) a lower type, although as regards existing functions and the higher standpoint of environment the infantile type must be considered the higher. Still a casual glance at the Ascidian tadpole shows that deficient as is the development of the ganglia afterward forming the medulla, the face is still more deficient. The face, as Minot shows,[64]is a characteristic of the highervertebrates, and acquires increased importance with rise in the evolution. The position of the face in embryonic development is originally determined by the head-bend. If a median, longitudinal section of the head be imagined to occupy a rectangular area divided into quarters, then the lower posterior quarter corresponds to the mouth region, the other three-quarters to the brain. As development progresses, the mouth quarter so disproportionately enlarges in relation to the rest of the head as to project forward in front of the fore-brain. In this stage, which is represented by the adult amphibians, the bulk of the facial apparatus is very great, proportionately to the cranium. In the reptiles the mouth region is elongated still further in front of the brain-case, resulting in the long snout. In mammals a third stage is established by the great increase in size of the brain, especially of the cerebralhemispheres. In consequence the brain comes to extend over the snout, as it were; in man, whose brain has the maximum enlargement, the facial apparatus is almost entirely covered by the brain. In the course of evolution the face, while serviceable to the animal for certain reasons of general constitutional character (food-getting, means of defence and means of obtaining mates), is less so than brain growth. A struggle for existence, therefore, inevitably results between the tendency of the face to appropriate power of growth and the like tendency of the brain, which, in defective organisms, produces marked reversions of the one for the benefit of the other. This struggle is further complicated by the embryonic relations to both of the hypophysis, since this body admittedly exerts an influence over bone growth,most markedly (but abnormally) exhibited in acromegaly (excessive bone growth). In this contest for existence in the degenerate types, degeneracy will, of necessity, take the direction of least resistance. As the brain is the last acquirement in vertebrates, considered from the standpoint of necessity, while the face (also a late acquirement) is much less complex, the last, obviously, will present the derangements from degeneration in shape, while the former will show these in shape and function. Furthermore, during the embryonic period the development of the brain will, of necessity, be more immediately affected by degeneracy than the face, which will gain in evolution at its expense. The stigmata of degeneracy, therefore, most likely to attract attention are in the order given, those of the face, jaws, and teeth; ear, eye, cranium; body, bodily functions; brain and spinal cord. Under these last are to be included their mental and nervous functions.
The following table summarizes in practical form these stigmata[65]:—
The factors producing degeneration act by causing nervous exhaustion in the first generation. This implies a practical degeneration in function since tone is lost.
Every nerve cell has two functions, one connected with sensation or motion, and the other with growth. If the cell be tired by excessive work along the line of sensation or motion the function as regards growth becomes later impaired, and it not only ceases to continue in strength, but becomes self-poisoned. Each of the organs (heart, liver, kidneys, &c.) has its own system of nerves (the sympathetic ganglia), which while under control by the spinal cord and brain act independently. If these nerves become tired the organ fails to perform its function, the general system becomes both poisoned and ill-fed, and nervous exhaustion results. In most cases,however, the brain and spinal cord are first exhausted. The nerves of the organs are thus allowed too free play, and exhaust themselves later. This systemic exhaustion has local expression in the testicles in the male, in the womb and ovaries in the female. Through this the body is imperfectly supplied with natural tonics (antitoxins) formed by the structures, and the general nervous exhaustion becomes still more complete. All the organs of the body are weakened in their function. Practically the neurasthenic in regard to his organs has taken on a degenerative function albeit not degenerating in structure, since the restlessness of the organs is a return to the undue expenditure of force which occurs in the lower animals in proportion as it is unchecked by a central nervous system. Through the influence of various exhausting agencies the spinal cord and the brain lose the gains of evolution and the neurasthenic is no longer adjusted to environment. Since the reproductive organs suffer particularly, children born after the acquirement of nervous exhaustion, more or less checked in development as the influence of atavism is healthy or not, repeat degenerations in the structure of their organs, which in the parent were represented by neurasthenic disorders in function. As the ovaries of the neurasthenic women generally exhibit prominently the effects of the nervous exhaustion, the offspring of these do not retain enough vigour to pass through the normal process of development.
Heredity and Atavism
Heredity,like other biologic factors, starts with the cell. As elsewhere pointed out, reproduction is first unicellular in type and involves an expenditure of nutritive force antagonistic to the growth of the cell. As Geddes remarks,[66]no one can dispute that the nutritive, vegetative, or self-regarding processes within the plant or animal are as opposed to the reproductive, multiplying, species-regarding processes, as income to expenditure or as building up to breaking down. But within the ordinary nutritive or vegetative functions of the body there is necessarily a continuous antithesis between two tissue-changing sets of processes, constructive and destructive metabolism. The contrast between these two processes is seen throughout nature, whether in the alternating phases of cell-life or in the great antithesis of growth and reproduction.
The starfish, deprived of an arm, replaces this by a fresh growth; crabs can renew the great claws which they have lost in fighting; even as high up as the lizard the loss of a leg or a tail can be made good. In a great variety of cases a kind of physiologicalforgiveness is shown in the reparation of even serious injuries. Now this “regeneration,” as it is called, is a process of reproduction. By continuous growth the cells of a persistent stump are able to reproduce the entire number. A sponge, a hydra or a sea-anemone may be cut into pieces with the result that each fragment grows into a new organism. The same is done with many plants; and though the division is artificial the result shows how very far from unique is the process spoken of as reproduction, which is but more or less discontinuous growth. This is well shown in the evolution onward insensibly from cases of continuous budding, as in sponge or rosebush, to discontinuous budding in hydra zoophyte and tiger-lily, where the offspring vegetatively produced are sooner or later set free.
The enormous expenditure of force required for unicellular reproduction is lessened by conjugation with another cell through satisfaction of cell hunger; and this, by making two cells do the work of one, lessens the amount of nutritive force expended by each. Evolution in fertilisation has the following steps:—
As Maupas has shown, by the time conjugation of two similar cells is reached, the paranucleus in both is incipiently hermaphroditic. The impelling force leading to conjugation is, as Rolph has shown, cell hunger. Conjugation, he remarks, is a necessity for satisfaction, a gnawing hunger which drives theanimal to engulf its neighbour, to isophagy (self-eating). The process of conjugation is only a special form of nutrition which occurs because of a reduction of the nutritive income or an increase of the nutritive needs. It is an “isophagy” which occurs in place of “heterophagy” (eating of others). “The less nutritive, and therefore smaller, hungrier, and more mobile organism is the male, the more nutritive and usually relatively more quiescent organism the female. Therefore, too, is it that the small starving male seeks out the large, well-nourished female for purpose of conjugation, to which the latter, the larger and better nourished, is on its own motive less inclined.” The unicellular type of reproduction long remains after sex differentiation has occurred and assumes the form of parthenogenesis (virgin generation). The phenomena of this demonstrate that the female element is the highest in evolution. Spitzka[67]has shown that the ovum possesses an inherent activity independently of fructification. How far this may extend in the direction of more mature development is shown by what is known about parthenogenesis. This is the development of living beings without a father. Bees, some butterflies, ants and wasps notoriously multiply their kind without sexual congress. As a rule the parthenogenetic offspring are themselves incapable of further procreating their kind. But to this there are remarkable exceptions. The aphides multiply for many generations without the intervention of a male. Weigenbergh has shown that the silk-moth can be propagated as long as the male element is permitted to act at every fourth generation. TheArtemsia salina, a minute crustaceanliving in saline springs, reproduces its kind for years without a male being present, males being produced at definite intervals only (Von Siebold). Among the vertebrata parthenogenetic development has also been observed, though rarely reaching maturity. Thus, segmentation occurs in unfertilised ova of the chicken (Oellacher), of the fish (Burnett and Agassiz), and of frogs (Moquia-Tanden). Spitzka has seen a blastoderm form in unfertilised ova of the toad-fish (Batrachus tau). Hensen isolated the oviducts of a rabbit, thus rendering the admission of semen impossible, while the ova, discharged at heat, were compelled to remain in these oviducts. Three years later he killed the animal and found the ova had developed into twisted, club-shaped, hollow sacs. The development in the female ovary (also, though very rarely, in the male testicle and parotid gland, which show such a remarkable metastatic sympathy in mumps), of dermoid cysts (containing bones recognisable as maxillaries with teeth, hair, and skin, rudimentary bowel, gland, and brain traces), even in undoubted virgins, proves that even the human ovum is capable of parthenogenetic development. While such development, so far as known to science, is always abortive, and while, as Washington Irving remarks, the ingenious maiden who to-day would attribute conception to any other cause than sexual congress would find it difficult to overcome the prejudice of scientists, yet embryology, while declaring immaculate generation improbable, does not pronounce it impossible. A worker bee may be an offspring of an unimpregnated queen bee. What is a regular occurrence in one class of animals is sometimes observed as anexceptional one in another class. If the startling and apparently miraculous nature of a virgin generation of a living child be regarded as the sole objection to receiving such a fact, its defender might urge that the virgin generation of a dermoid cyst with all the traces, however aborted, of vertebrate organisation, is only a shade less startling and miraculous.
This power of parthenogenesis, however, cannot continue indefinitely without extinction. This has been shown by the careful experiments of Maupas, who had observed 215 generations of an infusorian without sexual union. He found that then the family became extinct. Powers of nutrition, division, and conjugation with unrelated forms come to a standstill. The first symptom of this senile degeneration is decrease in size, which may go on till the individuals only measure a quarter of their normal proportions. Various internal structures then follow suit “until at last formless abortions occur, incapable of living and reproducing themselves.” The nuclear changes are no less momentous. The important paranucleus is fatally sterile. The larger nucleus may also become affected, “the chromatin gradually disappears altogether.” Physiologically, too, the organisms become manifestly weaker, though there is excessive sexual excitation. Such senile decay of the individuals and of the isolated family inevitably ends in death. Sexual union in those infusorians, dangerous perhaps for the individual life, a loss of time so far as immediate multiplication is concerned, is, in a new sense, necessary for the species. The life runs in cycles of a sexual division which are strictly limited. Conjugation with unrelated forms must occur else the whole life ebbs. Without it the protozoa, which some havecalled “immortal,” die a natural death. Conjugation is the necessary condition of their eternal youth and immortality.
Starting from this standpoint the relative functions of the two sexes in heredity are apparent. The original function of reproduction, that of cell division, is the part of the female. The male in the lower instances simply supplies the female with nutriment. Thus in certain plants there is nothing but a subtle osmosis between the sexes. This is also the case with some of the lower infusoria. With a rise in evolution protoplasm becomes differentiated. At the outset of the subject of heredity it is evident, therefore, that the female furnishes the type which is best capable of development when properly nourished by a highly developed male. To deficiencies in both particulars are due defects and variations in the offspring. As the product of fructification is longest under the nutritive control of the female, her influence is most emphatic in either redeeming defects or producing them. Heredity, according to Ribot, Spitzka, Féré, and others, is divisible into direct heredity, indirect heredity, and, more dubiously, telegony. Direct heredity consists in the transmission of paternal and maternal qualities to the children. This form of heredity has two aspects: (1) The child takes after father and mother equally as regards both physical and moral characters, a case strictly speaking of very rare occurrence; or (2) the child, while taking after both parents, more especially resembles one of them. Here again distinction must be made between two cases. The first of these is when the heredity takes place in the same sex from father to son, from mother to daughter. The otherwhich occurs more frequently, is where heredity occurs between different sexes—from father to daughter or from mother to son. Reversional heredity or atavism consists in the reproduction in the descendants of the moral or physical qualities of their ancestors. It occurs frequently between grandfather and grandson, as well as between grandmother and granddaughter. Collateral or indirect heredity, which is of rarer occurrence than the foregoing, and is simply a form of atavism, subsists, as indicated by the name, between individuals and their ancestors in the indirect line—uncle, or grand-uncle and nephew, aunt and niece. Finally (3) there is telegony, or the heredity of influence, very rare from the physiological point of view, which consists in reproduction in the children by a second marriage of some peculiarity belonging to a former spouse.
In dealing with heredity the position of Weismann and others, that acquired characters cannot be inherited, needs a short examination. In his later work Weismann has practically abandoned the essential basis of his position by admitting that maternal nutrition may play a part in determining variation. He[68]now asserts that the origin of a variation is equally independent of selection and amphimixis, and is due to the constant occurrence of slight inequalities of nutrition in the germ plasm. As acquired characters affecting the constitution of the parents are certain to affect the nutrition of the germ plasm, it is therefore obvious, according to Weismann’s admission, that acquired characters or their consequences will be inherited. This is an emphaticthough concealed abandonment of the central position of Weismann.
One of the stock arguments of the Weismann school is drawn from results of the Jewish rite of circumcision. While the operation is not calculated to make a profound impression on the constitution, and furthermore, as being performed on the male, less likely to affect the race, still the alleged non-inheritance of its results is much over-estimated. William Wolf,[69]of Baltimore, Maryland, who has circumcised six hundred Jewish children, finds on careful examination, that 2 per cent. were born partially circumcised and 6 per cent. were born with a short prepuce. P. C. Remondino,[70]of Los Angeles, California, has seen a large number of cases of absence of the prepuce which proved to be hereditary. After a confinement his attention was once called to the child by the nurse, who thought it was deformed. The nurse was astonished at the size and appearance of the glans penis. On examination the prepuce was found to be completely absent. On inquiry, the father and another son, born more than twenty years previously (comprising every male member of the family), were found to have been born with the glands fully exposed. He has seen a French family similarly affected.
Similar, but much stronger, results have been obtained by me through the courtesy of the Reverend Drs. S. Bauer, M. A. Cohen, and B. Gordon, all of Chicago. Dr. Bauer, who has been seventeen years in the practice of the religious rite of circumcision, has circumcised 3,400 boys and has found preputialabsence in about 3½ per cent. of the cases. Dr. Cohen, who has been two decades in the practice, has performed 10,000 circumcisions. He has found the prepuce wanting in 500 cases; partially developed in 300 cases; slightly developed in 2,000 cases. Dr. Gordon has performed 4,400 circumcisions in twenty-five years. He has found the prepuce absent in 15 cases; partly wanting in 200, and slightly developed in 2,200 cases. These, it should be remembered, are only cases where preputial change forced itself on the observer, who was not pursuing investigations on this point.
The volume of Hebrew casuistic religious literature collected in the Medrash, evidences as I have elsewhere[71]shown the frequency of congenital preputial defect.
That acquired characters can be transmitted has been definitely shown by the experiments of George Roe Lockwood,[72]of New York, anent hereditary transmission of mutilations. White mice were selected, as they begin to breed when thirty days old, and breed every thirty days. He bred in-and-in for thirty-six generations, destroying the weakly, and thus obtained finer animals than the first pair. He selected a pair, caged them by themselves, and clipped the tails of the young. When they were old enough to breed, he selected a pair and clipped the tails of their progeny. In the seventh generation he obtained some tailless mice, and finally a tailless breed. The experiments have one possible element of error; white mice, like all albinoes, are a degenerate type. At the same time these experiments show that accidental mutilations favoured by circumstances are inherited.
Eimer[73]reports the case of a pair of long-tailed pointers which had once produced a litter of long-tailed pups. In order to obtain short-tailed pups the owner had the tails of both shortened. The bitch from that time produced repeatedly short-tailed pups only. As the most careful attention was paid to the parents, no error can be suspected in this case, which, moreover, excites no surprise among dog-breeders.
Brown-Séquard[74]has shown that a peculiar alteration of the shape of the ear or a partial closing of the eyelids is inherited by the offspring of animals in which these changes were caused by dividing the sympathetic. Exophthalmia (eye protrusion) was inherited by guinea-pigs in whose parents this protrusion of the eyes had occurred after an injury to the spinal cord, and so were bruises and dry gangrene, as well as other trophic disturbances in the ear, due in the parents to an injury to the restiform body of the brain. Loss of certain phalanges or of whole toes of the hind feet which had occurred in the parents in consequence of division of the sciatic nerve was inherited. Diseased conditions of the sciatic nerve occurred in the offspring of guinea-pigs in which this nerve was divided. Forty guinea-pigs in which one or both eyes showed more or less morbid change were descended from three individuals in which one eye had become diseased in consequence of transverse section of the restiform body. Twenty guinea-pigs exhibited muscular atrophy on the upper and lower sides of the thigh, when in the parents such atrophy had been caused by section of the sciatic nerve.
The experiments of Brown-Séquard, Westphal,Dupuy[75]and Obersteiner, which show that artificially induced epilepsy is inherited, still further bear out the conclusions resultant on the inheritance of these mutilations. Indeed, Weismann has been forced to thatreductio ad absurdumin science, narrowly limited definitions, in order to maintain his position. “But although I hold it improbable,” he remarks, “that individual variability can depend on a direct action of external influences upon the germ cells and their contained germ plasm, because, as follows from sundry facts, the molecular structure of the germ plasm must be very difficult to change, yet it is by no means to be implied that this structure may not possibly be altered by influences of the same kind continuing for a very long time. This much may be maintained: that influences which are mostly of variable nature, tending now in one direction, now in another, can hardly produce a change in the structure of the germ plasm, and this is the reason why the cause of inheritable individual differences must be sought elsewhere than in these varying influences.” “No one has doubted,” he says, in reply to objections made by Virchow, “that there are a number of congenital deformities, birth-marks, and other individual peculiarities which are inherited. But these are acquired characters in the above sense. True, they must once have appeared for the first time, but we cannot say exactly from what causes; we only know that at least a great proportion of them proceed from the germ itself, and must therefore be due to alterations of the germinal substance. If Virchow could show that any single one of these hereditary deformities had its origin in the action of some externalcause upon the already formed body (soma) of the individual and not upon the germ cell, then the inheritance of acquired characters would be proved. But this no one has yet succeeded in proving, often as it has been maintained.”