FIG. 1.—ANTE-CHRISTIAN IRISH PIPES.
FIG. 2.—ANTE-COLUMBIAN PIPES FROM SCULPTUREAT STRATFORD-UPON-AVON.
The origin of the use of tobacco is usually ascribed to the New World. There is no doubt that immediately subsequent to the discovery of America, the use of tobacco spread over the world, and that its employment by Sir Walter Raleigh made it fashionable. It is certain, however, that the Romans and Irish employed pipes for smoking long ere the Christian era (Fig.1), but the substances smoked were not tobacco but dried aromatic leaves. The English before Columbus (Fig.2) did the same. In Western Asia historic botanical evidence leaves no doubt that tobacco was indigenous. Tobacco from the East hence probably encountered tobacco from the West, both currents meeting in Asia Minor. As with alcohol and opium the statistic method generally adopted proves fallacious when applied to the degenerative effects of tobacco. Study of its effects on the individual is needed to determineits effects on the race. The most careful researches show that the typical effects occur as a rule after long-continued use of tobacco,sometimesnot until twenty years or more. While many smokers reach old age, many fail to live to old age because they are smokers. The skin is the subject of itching and reddening, the nerves of taste are blunted, and patches develop in the throat; loss of appetite, epigastric fulness, pain, vomiting, and disturbance of bowel function are common. Menstrual disturbance occurs in women. In female cigar-makers abortion and pluriparity are frequent. The sexual appetite is impaired and sometimes sterility and impotence occur; also disturbed heart action, palpitation, rapid and intermitting pulse, precordial anxiety, weakness, faintness and collapse, with sclerosis of the coronary arteries of the heart and left ventricular hypertrophy. Cigars and cigarettes produce irritation of the nose, mucousmembrane, diminished smell, chronic hyperæmia of the epiglottis and larynx, and sometimes of the trachea and bronchi predisposing to consumption. Nicotine amblyopia, or sight weakness, is common, with central disturbances of the field of vision and with colour-weakness of sight. Often there is disorder of the ear tubes and congestion of drum, with loss of power of the hearing nerves, and consequent noises in the ear. The central nervous system is affected. In high schools, non-smokers get on better than smokers. Children from 9 to 15 years of age exhibit less intelligence, laziness, or other degenerative tendencies. Adults have head-pressure, sleeplessness, or drowsy stupor, depression, apathy, and dizziness. There may also be ataxic symptoms, paretic weakness of bowel and bladder, trembling and spasms. Tobacco insanities are comparatively rare in smokers, but are common in snuffers and still oftener in chewers.[157]In the precursory stage, which lasts about three months, there is general uneasiness, restlessness, anxiety, sleeplessness, and mental depression, often of a religious type. After this occurs precordial anxiety, and finally the psychosis proper consisting of three stages: 1. Hallucinations of all senses, suicidal tendency, depression of spirits, attacks of fright with tendency to violence and sleeplessness. 2. Exhilaration, slight emotional exaltation, agreeable hallucinations after from two to four weeks’ relaxation, again followed by excitement. 3. The intervals between exaltation and depression diminish, the patient becomes irritable, but otherwise not alive to his surroundings, and perception and attention are lessened. The patient may be cured in five or sixmonths if he stop tobacco during the first stage. In a year or so he may recover during the second stage. After the third stage the disease is frequently incurable. As the patient often becomes (especially by the use of the cigarette) anhabituéere puberty, the proper development and balance of the sexual and intellectual system is checked. These patients break down mentally and physically between 14 and 25. The moral delinquencies, other than sexual, are often an especial tendency to forgery and deceit of parents. Frequently the insanity of puberty (hebephrenia) is precipitated by tobacco. The cigarette, if used moderately, may be a sedative, but as used is a stimulant, and is often made of spoiled tobacco, resembling in reaction morphine, and on animals acting in a somewhat similar manner. As tobacco turns the salivary glands (which are concerned in digestion of starch) into excretory glands, it leads to imperfect digestion of starch, to consequent irregular fermentation in the bowel, thus at once furnishing a culture medium for microbes, to form more violent toxins from, and also creating leucomaines, to interfere especially with a nervous system overstimulated by nicotine. This is one great reason why those who snuff and chew tobacco more frequently become insane from tobacco than smokers, albeit these last are not exempt.
Statistics from the female employés of the Spanish, French, Cuban, and American tobacco factories, while defective and somewhat vitiated by the co-existence of other conditions producing degeneracy, support the opinion that the maternal tobacco habit (whether intentional or the result of an atmosphere consequent on occupation) is the cause of frequentmiscarriage, of high infantile mortality, of defective children, and of infantile convulsions.[158]
Tobacco, therefore, in its influence on the paternal and maternal organism, exhausts the nervous system so that an acquired neurosis results in such a way as to be transmissible.
Professional tea-tasters have long been known to suffer from nervous symptoms; very early in the practice of their occupation the head pressure symptoms of neurasthenia occur. Tremor also occurs early. While changes in the optic nerve have not been demonstrated beyond a doubt, still eye disorders have been observed in the pauper tea-drinkers of the United States and in the tea-tasters of Russia, thus indicating that similar changes to those produced by tobacco and alcohol are likely to occur in the optic nerve from tea. Bullard[159]has found that tea has a cumulative effect. In his experience toxic effects are not produced by less than five cups daily. The symptoms manifested are those of nervous excitement resembling hysteria, at times almost amounting to fury; nervous dyspepsia; rapid and irregular heart action; neuralgia of the heart; helmet-like sensation on the head, and tenderness along the spine. James Wood,[160]of Brooklyn, found that 10 per cent. of those under treatment at the city hospitals exhibited similar symptoms. Of these 69 per cent. were females. Every symptom ascribed by Bullard to tea was found by Wood in his cases, who also found that the women manifested irregularities in menstruationof neurasthenic or hysteria type. He has found these symptoms to be produced by one-half of the quantity of tea charged with these effects by Bullard. TheLancet[161]several years ago, from an editorial analysis of the effects of tea-tippling, took the position that in no small degree nervous symptoms occurring in children during infancy were due to the practice of the mothers, both of the working and society class, indulging in the excessive use of tea, the excess being judged by its effects on the individual and not by the amount taken. Convulsions and resultant infantile paralysis were frequently noticed among the children of these tea-tipplers. Observations among the factory population and the workers in the clothing sweating-shops show that tea neurasthenia, presenting all the ordinary symptoms of nervous exhaustion, is especially common among these. It is evident that tea produces a grave form of neurasthenia readily transmissible to descendants. In addition to its effects directly upon the nervous system, tea tends to check both stomach and bowel digestion, and thus increases the self-poisoning which is so prominent a cause, consequence, and aggravation of these nervous conditions.
Coffee exerts a very similar action to that of tea, albeit the nervous symptoms produced by it are usually secondary to the disturbances of the stomach and bowel digestion. Coffee produces tremor, insomnia, nervous dyspepsia, and helmet sensations. With the exception of certain districts of the United States, coffee abuse is not carried to such an extent as tea, albeit in these, as in some portions of Germany, the habit is an excessive one. The conditionsdescribed result in Germany as frequently as they do in the United States. Mendel[162]finds that in Germany coffee inebriety is increasing and supplanting alcohol. Profound depression with sleeplessness and frequent vertex headache are early symptoms. Strong coffee will remove these temporarily, but it soon loses its effects, and they recur. There is much tremor, especially of the hands. The heart’s action is rapid and irregular. Nervous dyspepsia is frequent. L. Bremer, of St. Louis, Mo., has observed similar conditions among both Germans and Americans there.
While coca took its place only recently among the toxic causes of degeneracy, it was old as a factor in the degeneration of the Peruvian long ere the discovery of America by Columbus. Forty-three years ago Johnston[163]wrote that even Europeans in different parts of Peru had fallen into the coca habit long practised by the Indians. A confirmed chewer of coca is called acoquero, and he becomes more thoroughly a slave to the leaf than the inveterate drunkard is to alcohol. Sometimes thecoquerois overtaken by an irresistible craving, and betakes himself for days together to the woods, and there indulges unrestrainedly in coca. Young men of the best families of Peru are considered incurable when addicted to this extreme degree of excess. They abandon white society, and live in the woods or in Indian villages. In Peru the term whitecoquerohas the same sense as irreclaimable drunken tramp. The inveteratecoquerohas an unsteady gait, yellow skin, quivering lips, hesitant speech, and generalapathy. The drug has assumed an unusual prominence in the field of degeneracy since the discovery of its alkaloid, cocaine. Since then there has sprung into existence in both Europe and the English-speaking countries the world over, a habit which, while much over-estimated, is undoubtedly growing, and aggravating as well as producing degeneracy. Many of the cases reported as due to cocaine are, however, chargeable to the desire of the hysteric or neurasthenic to secure a new sensation, or the desire on the part of the opium or whiskyhabituéto try a dodge for forgiveness by friends. The habit is very frequently induced by patent medicines taken to cure catarrh by the neurasthenic, or to cure nervousness by hysterics as well. As the deformities of the nose passages predispose to what is called “catarrh,” patent medicines for local application containing cocaine are frequently employed in the treatment of this supposed constitutional disease, with the result of aggravating the original degeneracy. As the youth under the stress of puberty frequently ascribes all his ills to catarrh, he also employs very frequently snuffs containing cocaine, and has his nervous condition much aggravated thereby. Among the nostrums urged in the newspapers and magazines for this condition, so often resultant on nerve stress, is a certain notorious snuff containing 3 per cent. of cocaine. From the description given by Johnson of thecoquerothere can be no doubt but tramps, errabund lunatics, and paupers result from this habit, to give birth to degenerates in the next generation.
Lead has been found to produce in those exposed to its fumes a systemic nervous exhaustion, characterised by local paralysis about the wrist as wellas the general symptoms of profound systemic nerve tire. This may result, as Tanquerel des Planches[164]pointed out nearly half a century ago, in acute insanity of the confusional type followed very often by forms of mental disorder of a chronic type resembling paretic dementia. In some cases the patient recovers from the acute insanity to suffer thereafter from epilepsy. In other cases, as Kiernan has shown,[165]an irritable suspicional condition results, in which the patient may live for years, marry, and leave offspring. This last condition and the epileptic are the most dangerous as to the production of degeneracy. As has already been pointed out, the women employed in the pottery factories in Germany suffer according to Rennert[166]from a form of lead poisoning which produces decidedly degenerative effects upon the offspring. These women had frequent abortions, often produced deaf-mutes, and very frequently macrocephalic children.
Brass workers suffer from a very similar nervous condition to that produced by lead. Hogden,[167]of Birmingham, called attention to the grave forms of nervous exhaustion produced among brass-workers. The period during which the patient is able to pursue the occupation without breaking down is longer than that of the lead workers. Women, like men, are exposed to this condition. The chief effect produced, so far as offspring have been observed, is chiefly frequent abortions and infantile paralysis.
The occupations employing mercury, whether mining, mirror-making, or gilding, produce forms ofsystemic nervous exhaustion in which the most marked symptom (but less important from a sanitary standpoint) is a tremor amounting at times almost to shaking-palsy. Like all other systemic nervous exhaustions, the mercurial one may appear as degeneracy in the offspring. The employment of women in match factories and tenement house sweating shops is growing. The chief toxic effect of phosphorus is not the localised jaw necrosis. This is but an evidence of the progressive system saturation with phosphorus. It bears the same relation to the more dangerous effects of phosphorus that “blue gum” does to the systemic effects of lead.
Every condition arising from a toxic cause capable of producing profound systemic nervous exhaustion in the ancestor, and especially the ancestress, is likely to be transmitted as degeneracy to the descendant. Undoubtedly with the growing tendency of woman to pass from the ill-paid work of the seamstress to the better paid but dangerous occupations, a certain seeming increase in degeneracy must result.
Contagious and Infectious Disease
Amongthe gains of human advance in evolution stand out prominently complete immunity from certain diseases due to germs, and partial immunity from others, which last immunity results in chronic types, rather than in acute, because of increased vital resistance in man. Tuberculosis and dourine, acute diseases in the cow and horse, have become chronic diseases, tuberculosis (or consumption) and syphilis, in man. Such chronicity is evidence of advance, yet it constitutes an element of degeneracy, since the victim of the chronic disease is able to leave more offspring than would be possible were the disorder acute. In other respects acute and chronic contagions and infections exert the same influence in regard to degeneracy. The germ of the disease may be inherited, or general nutrition of the fœtus may be so checked in development that the child inherits a predisposition to disease.
Through this check to fœtal development the phagocytes, or white blood cells, become so weakened that they are unable to devour fœtal structures as useless to man as the tadpole’s tail (which it devours) is useless to the developed frog. This power beingweakened, the organs which form antitoxins (or protective tonics against disease), from lack of development fail to perform their function. For this reason in the degenerate many infections and contagions assume their old destructive type.
The influence of these disorders in the parent may result in the bony mal-development shown to occur in animals by Charrin and Gley, and in man by Coolidge. The facial bones, jaw, and teeth are peculiarly liable to be thus affected. Though the effect of the disease on the parent be but temporary, the child’s development may be checked as to higher tendencies. Thus mothers have borne moral imbeciles, epileptics or lunatics, after a pregnancy during which they were attacked by contagious disease, albeit the children of subsequent and previous pregnancies were normal.
The children of pregnancies previous to the one complicated by the contagious disease may be healthy, while those of subsequent pregnancies are defective. Any contagious or infectious disease may not only interfere temporarily with the bodily strength, but may produce complete change in the parent’s system extending even to the highest acquirement of man. In some occur changes thus graphically described by Bulwer: “There have been men who, after an illness in which life itself seemed suspended, have arisen as out of a sleep with characters wholly changed. Before gentle, good, and truthful, they now become bitter, malignant, and false. To those whom they before loved they evince repugnance and loathing. Sometimes this change is so marked and irrational that their kindred ascribe it to madness. Not the madness which affects them in the ordinarybusiness of life, but that which turns into harshness and discord the moral harmony which results from natures whole and complete.”
The nerve centres controlling nutrition, growth, repair, secretion, and excretion are often as deeply affected as those checks constituting morality. At the periods of physiologic stress these effects are especially noticeable. Moral insanity, intellectual insanity, unequal mental balance, hysteria, precocious sexuality, unconscious mendacity, mental parasitism (the germ of pauperism), epilepsy, neuroses, and all types of nutritive and constitutional defects result. The nutritional defects may appear chiefly in the walls of the blood vessels and lymphatics. While these are most common in the chronic infections and contagions, they often occur in acute typhoid fever, scarlatina, diphtheria, whooping-cough, &c. Proper blood supply and utilisation of waste is thus prevented. Organs cannot perform their function, and are predisposed to disease from disuse and from weakness of the disease-fighting phagocytes and antitoxins. From this results irregularity of organ function, which is hereditarily transmissible. The weakened vessel walls yield to strain, and thus produce local stomach, bowel, liver, gland, and kidney disorders. This organ weakness may alone be transmitted to the offspring. The functions of the great glands (thyroid, thymus, suprarenals, pituitary body, bone-marrow, testicles and ovaries) which secrete principles necessary to the equal balance of nutrition are perverted. The liver, in the acute but more particularly the chronic contagions, paralysed in nerve tone, fails in its function of poison-destroyer, as for the same reason the kidneys fail in their powerof ejecting hurtful waste. Through this interaction of perverted nutrition, imperfect poison-destruction, and deficient waste ejection result and continue the states of nervous exhaustion after the contagions and infections. Thus nerve exhaustion with its suspicion, its capricious hopefulness and gaiety, is practically continuous in tuberculosis, syphilis, and leprosy.
The acute and chronic contagions and infections so lower cell vitality through the perverted functions described that inert connective tissue replaces healthy working cells. This is especially the case with syphilis, which, when driven from the system, leaves behind it a tendency to disease based on this connective tissue increase. This tendency, latent in the ancestor, may be so intensified in the descendant as to produce the hereditary ataxias (loss of movement power), and like neuroses. At the periods of stress such tendencies are peculiarly potent, and not only check, but reverse development. The chronic contagions and infections are most fertile sources of human degeneracy since their weakened products are enabled to survive under modern beneficence. Of these chronic contagions two (tuberculosis and syphilis) alone deserve attention, since the third (leprosy) exerts but little influence. Despite its existence for more than a century (New Brunswick and Nova Scotia on the north and Louisiana on the south) on the borders of the United States, despite its subsequent importation from Norway, Sweden, China, and Hawaii, its spread has been infinitesimal, and its influence on race deterioration is still less demonstrable.
Tuberculosis (“the white death”) is from every standpoint a social danger more serious than syphilis.The father, as in syphilis, can infect the mother, but sterility is much less likely. As has already been shown in the chapter on heredity, plural and quickly repeated birth are common in tuberculous families. The tuberculous diathesis (or “habit,” as Weismann calls it) was very early observed in the United States. Nearly seventy years ago W. P. Dewees, of Philadelphia, pointed out its frequency and its early observation by the Greek and Roman physicians. He cites a case illustrative of the extent and uniformity of diathesis in a very numerous family. This predisposition arose on the side of the mother, though she lived herself to the age of forty-three, a period much exceeding that of any of her children, with the exception of a son, who died in his forty-fifth year. This lady bore twenty-three children without being able to suckle any but the two first. The males much exceed the females in number, yet there did not appear to be any exception to their favour in the transmission of the phthisical taint, except that they attained in general a greater age before they died. Some died about puberty, others at manhood or womanhood; but all, with the exception just stated, under thirty. The disease was never very rapid; they generally complained from one to two years before they died. The men had a healthy, even in some instances an athletic, appearance until the disease became open and decided. In their growth and stature they altogether resembled the father, who was not only a remarkably stout man, but lived beyond the eightieth year. The females, who passed puberty (two in number) were rather stout women, while the mother was both delicate and small. This family lived in the country, was very wealthy,and always accustomed to the various means generally found successful either in destroying the predisposition or lessening its influence, yet in no one instance in this family were they successful, though the open form of the disease was retarded perhaps in all. The females died the earliest.[168]
The blood vessel system is affected as regards development in such families. The heart is often diminutive; the right ventricle is exaggerated. Two great types of degenerate constitutions are produced in children of the tuberculous. One of these may well come under De Giovanni’s category of the torpid. The victim is usually coarse-featured and coarse-skinned, with peculiarly unstable mentality; slowness of comprehension is combined with power of continuity of thought; at times mental apathy alternates with quickness of perception. Decided exaggeration of the lymphatic system (connected with utilising of material elsewhere than at the point where it has been rendered unfit) with deficient function occurs, resulting in fitting a soil for germs. In other respects the torpid resembles the second type, the erethistic (nervously fussy type) of De Giovanni. This is generally characterised by the presence of a clear complexion, a fine skin, and features well cut and often beautiful. The lips are red and the teeth pearly white, though liable to early decay, and the eyes are large and full, the pupil being widely dilated and the white of the eye beautifully clear. The eyelashes are long, curved and silky, and the blue veins show distinctly through the clear thin skin. The bones are light, the hands and feet well formed, the stature often tall, and the whole figureslightly and gracefully built. The erethists generally remain spare, and have a strong dislike to fatty food. They are vivacious and excitable, and the intellectual faculties are often highly developed. At an early age they show marvellous activity. The regularity with which such precocious tubercular children die has given rise to proverbs anent exceptionally clever children that they are “too wise to live long.” Wanting in stamina, they are incapable of prolonged exertion either of mind or body, and break down under conditions which would not prove injurious to the healthy. They are continually taking “cold,” and are prone throughout life to affections of an inflammatory character. Multiple and frequent pregnancies occur. The children, deficient in vitality, are carried off in numbers during infancy by convulsions, brain fever, water on the brain, exhaustion, diarrhœa, teething, and other ailments, or they succumb at the second detention or at puberty. A small proportion reach maturity. Few live beyond thirty-five or forty years of age. However brilliant intellectually, they are equally emotional, impressionable, and impulsive. There is a marked absence of mental stability. They are suspiciously capricious. The great secreting and eliminating glands undergo with peculiar frequency the perversions already described.
Neuroses and psychoses are peculiarly frequent in childhood and youth. The degenerative power of tuberculosis is not always due to the influence of the germ, or even of the toxin produced by it, but to the state of nerve weakness resultant on the disorder. The victim of tuberculosis (especially if affecting the lung) is a suspicious, yet hopeful, nervous invalid,whose functions are irregularly performed and who is therefore likely to leave scions with greater defect, especially as the maternal factor, either through infection or worry, can hardly escape being weakened. Tuberculosis attacks the bones of the offspring, especially the spine and hip-joint, but the victim of these last frequently regain health after apparent recovery from the local disease through surgical procedures. If the victim of the hip-joint disorder be of the erethist type marriage is not unlikely. Despite the deformity produced by spine disorder, popular superstition as to the “good luck” of a hunchback leads to marriage among the working class. Monetary and social considerations effect the same result among the wealthy classes. Here deformity does not prevent marriage, but predisposes to sterility through birth difficulty.
The influence of syphilis is, in a general sense, the same as that of tuberculosis, except that by reversing the principle of individuation it leads to greater sterility. Furthermore it exhibits greater tendencies to revert towards health, and yields (even in the inherited form) more to medicinal treatment. The inherited form at times presents itself in two types closely simulating those due to tuberculosis. Like the bacillus of tuberculosis, the syphilitic germ attacks every structure and organ of the body. Its reversal of the principle of individuation, causing excessive cell formation, produces more decidedly demonstrable effects. As syphilis is more apt to attack the central nervous system than tuberculosis, it would seem that it is a greater race-deteriorating factor. The excessive tendency to cell formation, however, produces impotence in man, sterility and abortion in woman.There are very good reasons for believing that the race is becoming immune to syphilis, and that this disease will disappear. Its greatest race-deteriorating effect is in preparing the soil for tuberculosis and other infections and contagions.
The influence of contagions and infections on degeneracy is therefore by no means slight. Each disease can produce grave constitutional defects in the ancestor likely to be intensified in the offspring. The greatest social dangers result from tuberculosis; the next from syphilis. Typhoid fever, scarlatina, small-pox, measles, diphtheria, whooping-cough, and all other contagions, however, may produce these constitutional defects, either through the mother during pregnancy or through their secondary effects on the ancestor’s constitution. If the subject be attacked before the close of the periods of dental stress an arrest of development of the bones of the face may result with irregularities in the shape and position of the teeth. These, then, are stigmata of degeneracy, especially due, in the individual presenting them, to the contagions and infections rather than to inheritance alone.
Climate, Soil, and Food
Amongthe factors constituting environment few have impressed the biologist so much as climate, soil, and food. The seeming modifications produced by these have made a very decided impression on the sceptical Weismann, who stated that “the possibility is not to be rejected that influences continued for a long time, that is, for generations, such as temperature, climate, kind of nourishment, &c., which may affect the germ plasm, as well as any other part of the organism, may produce a change in the constitution of the germ plasm. But such influences would not then produce individual variations, but would necessarily modify, in the same way, all the individuals of a species living in a certain district. It is possible, though it cannot be proved, that many climatic varieties have arisen in this manner. Possibly other phenomena of variation must be referred to a variation in the structure of the germ plasm produced directly by external influences.”
Considering the changes brought about in European plants and animals in Australia, those occurring in the East Indian mongoose in Jamaica, the changes in European plants and animals in America, or Americananimals in Europe and European animals in Asia, Weismann’s position seems judicial.
The influences dependent on food, soil, and climate producing normal modifications have been remarkably illustrated in the gilled batrachian Axolotl. This, under the nourishment and change of surroundings of the Jardin des Plantes, was transformed into a gill-less batrachian, which had hitherto been regarded as belonging to a totally distinct family.
According to Darwin,[169]English dogs degenerate in India in a few generations, losing the peculiarities of form and mental character which distinguish their particular race, in spite of the greatest care in selection and prevention of crossing. An instance which well deserves the consideration of those anthropologists who attach but little importance to the influence of the environment and to the value of speech as an aid to the ethnologist is that of the Wurtemburgers, who settled (1816) near Tiflis in Russia. They had originally fair or red hair, light or blue eyes and coarse, broad features. In the first generation brown hair and black eyes began to appear; in the second black hair and eyes became the rule, while the face acquired an oval form. These changes were due entirely to the surroundings, no instance of crossing with Georgian natives being on record. At the same time, these transformed Wurtemburgers continue to speak their German mother-tongue uninfluenced by the local dialects.[170]
The alleged transformation of the British into the Yankee is commonly cited in illustration of the supposed effects of soil and climate. Three decades[171]ago Vogt remarked that American Anglo-Saxons or Yankees were instanced as illustration of change of character. Already, after the second generation, according to Pruner-Bey, the Yankee presents features of the Indian type. At a later period the glandular system is reduced to the minimum of its normal development. The skin becomes like leather; the colour of the cheeks is replaced by sallowness. The head becomes smaller and rounder, and is covered with stiff, dark hair; the neck becomes longer, and there is greater development of the cheek-bones and the masseters. The temporal fossæ becomes deeper, the jaw-bones more massive, the eyes lie in deep approximated sockets. The iris is dark, the glance is piercing and wild. The long bones, especially in the superior extremities, are lengthened so that the gloves manufactured in England and France for the American market are of a particular make, with very long fingers. The female pelvis approaches that of the male. According to Quatrefages, America has thus, from the English race, produced a new white race which might be called the Yankee race. Vogt believes that America dries up the skin and reduces the fat, an effect to which all the above differences might be reduced. That the head becomes smaller he utterly denies. Exact cranial measurements by Morton show that the skull of the Yankee is at least as large as that of the Englishman.
Similar changes have been noted in the Anglo-Saxon Australians. The true explanation of this is that early rigorous environment tended to cause reversion to types not uncommon even now in Great Britain, Ireland, and Scandinavia, resultant on theadmixture of primitive types to which reference has been made. The same error has been made about the pelvis as about the skull. The male pelvis in the American is approximating the female in accordance with advance, since, as Havelock Ellis has shown,[172]not only by his skull, but by his pelvis, modern man is following a path first marked out by woman. The skull of the modern woman is more markedly feminine than that of the savage woman, while that of the modern man has approximated to it. Not only is the pelvis of the modern woman much more feminine in character than that of the primitive woman, but the modern man’s pelvis is also becoming more feminine.
The validity of Vogt’s position anent the “Yankee” change of type is fully demonstrated by the following portraits of four generations of a noted American family with a Scandinavian patronymic, coming originally from a district in England where the alleged “Yankee” type (even to its nasal tone and so-called “Americanisms”) occurs. The first “American” of the family (Fig.3) was born in Connecticut in 1761 and died in 1826. He had a dolichocephalic head with massive jaws, prominent lips, especially the upper. The nose is long and the eyes are set close together, the forehead very high and straight. Quite a change is noticeable in the second generation (Fig.4). The face is not so long, the lateral diameter of the head is larger, the forehead more prominent, and the eyes are a little farther apart. The nose is about the same length and while there is a resemblance about the mouth and chin, the distance from the front of the chin to the tip of the nose is not quite so long.The change seems to be due to shortening of the chin.
The next generation (Fig.5) shows still further changes. The forehead is broader and less retreating than either. There is perceptibly lest prognathism. There is less prominence in the supraorbital region.
The fourth generation exhibits (Fig.6) a nearly brachycephalic head. The head is nearly round, forehead full, eyes set in the head to correspond with its width, nose broad, upper lips short, and the lower jaw is evidently much shorter in a perpendicular line. These changes are due to a protruding forehead, receding chin, and delicate features.
The climate of the United States exercises, according to certain sociologists, on the first generation of European immigrants, a deleterious influence in regard to fecundity. The decrease in the fecundity of the American woman has been charged to various anti-social causes (abortion and prevention of conception) and to a “nervousness” induced by the climate. A seemingly fair test of the influence of the climate would be a race elsewhere fecund, and whose religion encourages fecundity, decreasing in the first generation after immigration to the United States. Such a race is the Jewish. According to Gihon’s analysis of the United States census of 1890[173]the Jewish birth rate is diminishing. From the mothers born in the United States the average is 3·56 children, as against 5·24 for those born in Germany, 5·36 for those in Russia and Poland, 5·27 for those in Hungary, and 5·44 for those in Bohemia. These figures, however, do not demonstrate the influence of climate, but ofenvironment. The Jew, unlike the earlier American colonists, is not exposed to the stress of frontier life. He has a more favourable mental and physical environment than on the continent of Europe. This fact, therefore, does not demonstrate the effects of climate, but is really chargeable to climate, food, soil, and other factors constituting environment. That climate cannot be considered apart from these factors is shown, as I pointed out several years ago, by the fact that the United States surveyors in Minnesota reported to the national authorities that it was impossible to live the whole year in that state because of the extremely cold winter. Now, not only do people live and cultivate the soil throughout the entire state, but large cities have sprung up still farther north, and the country around has become well populated. Hence, in dealing with influences of climate, change of food and hygienic conditions must be taken into account. The error of the American surveyors as to the acclimatisation of the white race in cold climates has been emphasised as to the tropics and arctics. Here, however, the same error has been demonstrated by very careful researches. The experience of the Arctic regions as to necessity for change in diet and hygiene has been fully borne out by observations on the Anglo-Saxon in the tropics. The early experience of the English in India, upon which a fatal prognosis as to the future of British India was based, turns out to have been erroneous.
The influence of climate involves more than temperature. Stokvis, in a paper read before the Tenth International Medical Congress, at Berlin, on the comparative pathology of the human races with reference to the vital resistance of Europeans in tropicalclimates,[174]finds that the European immigrant in the tropics is assailed by two hostile forces: tropico-thermal and tropico-infectious agencies. The expression of innate racial peculiarities, like the variations of vegetable life and the varieties of animal life from effects of increased temperature, are such as occur in the inhabitants of temperate regions during the height of summer.
Marestang and Eykman find that neither high temperature alone nor meteorological agencies, apart from other deleterious influences, can produce that impoverishment of blood called “tropical anæmia.” Stokvis shows that the tropical European does not prove inferior to the aboriginal with respect to thermal agencies. He is less susceptible to chill than the native. Mortality statistics of respiratory organ affections are greater for the native. While the European suffers more from liver disease than the native, the latter is less addicted to alcoholic drinks and pork. The percentage of deaths from cases treated is, however, more than twice as great with the native as with the European. Variations of physiologic life under tropical thermal conditions have little to do with the race. The vital resistance of the immigrant European (the European transformed into a permanent high-summer man) is somewhat greater than that of the native races.
Respecting the disease-producing effects of tropical infectious agencies, the experience of the last ten years (1880-90) is very different from that prior to 1860.
Average annual death-rate per thousand:—
These changes are the consequence of sound sanitation. “The fairest laurel practical hygiene may boast of to-day is, doubtless, the laurel acquired in ameliorating the sanitary conditions of the European soldiers in tropical climates.” A century ago James Lind said, “Much more than to the climate you are indebted to your own ignorance and negligence for the disease from which you suffer in tropical climates.”
These statistics do not entirely support the declaration of Hippocrates that “races are the daughter of climates,” but tend to show that the vital resistance of the different races in tropical climates depends more on external conditions than on race. Acclimatibility of strong, healthy, adult Europeans of both sexes in tropical climates must be admitted without any reserve, provided that they assiduously observe all hygienic rules. Stokvis disproves the allegation that the European is not able to produce in tropical regions more than three or four generations of true European blood, and that from the third or fourth generation onward sterility is the rule.
So accustomed, remarked Felken, however, is a man to his environment that it is difficult to remove an European from his home in the temperate regionto any other, and yet for him to retain his health. Much may be done in the tropics to render climate more salubrious and sanitary precautions will do a great deal for the health of the community. But when all is done permanent residence for Europeans under European conditions is out of the question in the low-lying regions of the tropics. Comparatively few areas exist in the tropics where any great success for European colonisation can be prophesied from altitude alone. The influence of altitude on the physiologic characteristics is, however, very evident. The residents at high altitudes are strong, robust, buoyant, and of great mental and physical endurance.
In disproof of this position of Felken, Viault, of Bordeaux, has shown that the phenomena resultant on the acclimation of man at great altitudes comes neither from the frequency of respiratory movements nor from greater activity of the pulmonary circulation as has been asserted, but from increase of red blood globules. While the effects of both excessive heat and excessive cold may be admitted, even there other factors play a part. Very high mean temperature with low humidity is more likely to result in sunstroke and allied conditions than high temperature with high humidity. Low temperature of the Arctic regions tends to produce anæmia in natives of temperate zones. Food and depressing circumstances have, however, to be taken into consideration.
Sunstroke produces the ordinary phenomena of nervous exhaustion, but the patient becomes more irritable, suspicious, and extremely proud. As these patients are not recognised for a long times as insane they often marry and produce degenerates. Kiernan reports a case in which father and mother (both ofhealthy stock) were overcome by the heat during one of the processions of the American Centenaries. The children born before the sunstroke were healthy, but there had been no children for five years previously. A year subsequent to the sunstroke (which was followed by a change in character in both parents) the woman had triplets, one of which died soon after birth from convulsions. The second of the triplets, a girl, became epileptic at 2, a prostitute at 16, and chronically insane at 20. The third triplet became a puberty lunatic at 16. Of three children subsequently born, two are epileptics and one is a moral imbecile who manifests premonitory evidences of paranoia. Sunstroke, however, underlies many cases of alcoholism. Not a few of the instances of degeneration charged to alcoholism are, in reality, due to the nervous condition arising from the exhaustion produced by sunstroke. To this factor was in no small degree due the extremely large infant mortality of the English in India of the first half of the present century. While temperature plays a part in producing degeneracy in the offspring through its production of systemic disorder in the ancestor, it is usually associated with other factors which aid or predispose to its effects. It also predisposes to the greater action of other causes. Very frequently the sun-struck person, rendered incapable of continued labour by irritability, becomes a tramp or a pauper, either of which conditions tends to accelerate the degenerative process and furthermore to increase the possible chances of passing down the effect through heredity by the ease with which illicit relationships are contracted. The least intelligent of the prostitute class, or rather, of that class of nymphomaniacs who have notfully entered upon a prostitute career, are driven into the workhouse or almshouse, where they often remain for years, or depart at intervals, leaving their offspring to be reared at public expense. The number of such children born yearly in almshouses is at least ten thousand in the United States.[175]An enormous proportion of these die in infancy but sufficient survive to form a potent source of degenerates.
The influence of overheating further predisposes to the attack of microbes even in the temperate climates, and to constitutional defects resultant on these.
A factor of degeneracy as related to soil on which much stress has been laid, is that of goitre. This has been carefully studied by Munson[176]among the Indians on the reservation in the United States. The number was 77,173, of whom 2·36 per cent. had goitre. As regards geographic distribution the disease is more prevalent in the southern part of Montana. Goitre was reported as practically unknown among the white settlers living about the reservations where goitre was prevalent among the Indians. Fully 80 per cent. of the cases occur in Indian women, the disease being not only much less frequent, but also less decided and less extensive in the male. The average age of onset of the disease was from 12 to 14 years. There are many instances illustrating the apparent heredity of goitre. Several consecutive generations show its development. Only one case is reported in which goitre was associated with cretinism. Goitre among Indians cannot be traced to high altitudes, climate or water containing excess of calcium magnesium salts. The disease is apparently due to insanitary surroundings,depressing constitutional conditions, improper and excessively nitrogenous diet. This condition of things among the Indians bears an important relation to the facts pointed out by C. K. Clarke,[177]of Kingston, Ontario, who found in the Canadian asylums a large number of goitrous patients and one goitrous attendant. The goitrous patients, who were of long residence, had come from all parts of the dominion. The size of the goitre was in proportion to the length of the residence. It is possible that local influence may have much to do with the disease, though it is evident that the insane are much more liable to it than normal persons. W. B. Fletcher, of Indianapolis, has observed similar frequency as to goitre among the insane there, especially among the foreigners and their immediate descendants. Cretinism, according to Morel, was degeneracy due to a special action which a toxic principle exercises on a cerebro-spinal system, whether by the air that is breathed or by the substances ingested in the economy, and which, above all, appears to have some relation to a soil where predominates the magnesian limestone. That the last factor has some influence is shown by the fact that goitrous enlargements are encountered in medical practice in Chicago much more frequently than among the corresponding classes in the East. The water in Chicago contains magnesium-lime salts, whether it be derived from the lake or from the artesian well. The fact, however, that the Indians and the insane exhibit a tendency to goitre indicates that behind the influence of the soil or of diet lies a neuropathic constitution, whether this be inherited or acquired. Cretinism is much more frequent in theUnited States than was apparent ere the discovery of the value of the thyroid glands in treatment. Under the stimulus of investigation for cases in which to try this treatment, medical literature from all parts of the United States has been filled with reports of authenticated cases. Among these are scions of families which have been American for more than three generations and which may, therefore, be considered as products of an American environment. The same condition of things has occurred in both Great Britain and on the European continent in districts which, prior to 1890, were supposed to be free from cretinism. This illustrates the results of stimulus given investigation in biology rather than increase of the disorder.
The influence of spoiled maize in producing the mixed skin, nervous and mental disorder known as pellagra in the Italians, would seem, from the results of the researches of Billod,[178]to be chiefly due to the conjoined effects of unhygienic surroundings, the offspring of climate and soil. The fungus on maize (ustilago), like the fungus on rye (ergot), produces rather long-lasting neurosis of an epileptic character, susceptible to transmission to the offspring of women poisoned by these fungi. The Italian disease, pellagra, manifests the features one would expect from an improper food taken under unhygienic conditions. While this is undoubtedly exaggerated by the habits of the peasantry in Italy, still in a lesser degree like effects of food are observable in other races.
The influence of the potato diet in degenerating the Irish Celt in comparison with the Scottish Celtunder the same conditions, is difficult at present to determine for lack of data. Certainly the descendants of this class of Irish Celts rapidly regain a handsome, healthy status under mixed American diet, even though the hygienic surroundings in the great cities be not the best. He who has to treat a class of neurasthenics in whom starch digestion is impaired finds that a diet of potatoes (undoubtedly through the auto-intoxication it produces) will increase certain nervous symptoms, and hence the tendency to transmission to the next generation.
In the families of the pioneers in the United States, as well as the families of farmers in secluded valleys in Norway, Switzerland, and elsewhere, the influence of monotony of diet, aggravated by monotony of surroundings, has undoubtedly produced a large amount of degeneracy. Ray Brigham of New York, Awl of Ohio, and Patterson of Illinois have shown that there is an unusual frequency of insanity in farmers’ wives which is undoubtedly traceable to these conditions. Kiernan, of Chicago, has reported a case fairly typical of those earlier described by the American alienists just cited. The first generation was a woman of New England stock, of tireless energy, to whom work was a pleasure and rest an abhorrence, and who lived on a farm miles from the town. She did all her own work and brought up a large family, chiefly on maize, potatoes, and bread, pork being the meat diet. At 50 this woman removed with her husband, who had grown wealthy, to a small country town. Here she conducted the entire work of the household without a servant. At 52 she broke down with neurasthenia, which rapidly passed into periodical gloomy spells, in one of which shecommitted suicide. Her youngest daughter, who had an asymmetrical face, has the periodical gloomy tendency of the mother, alternating with periods of restlessness, which evince themselves in doing unnecessarily the work of the servants and other labours inconsistent with her husband’s social status. She had at times suicidal and homicidal impulses. She has three children; one exhibits no special abnormality; the eldest, a boy of eleven, dislikes to play with boys because they are rough, and plays with girls, to whom he is at times mischievously cruel. He likes to sew and make doll’s clothing and purchase dolls, while there are other indications of sexual abnormality. The youngest, a girl, has frequent attacks of epileptic-like fury, although between these she is kind-hearted, good-humoured, and very affectionate. In dealing with the question of soil, the factors predisposing to the attacks of the parasite of malaria have to be taken into consideration; certainly the inhabitants of certain malarial districts exhibit all the characteristics of degenerates.
The influence of nutrition in producing nervous states likely to be transmitted as degeneracy in the offspring are excellently illustrated in the nervous disorders due to improper nutrition during youth. This may, as W. S. Christopher[179]of Chicago has shown, produce all possible neuroses to which the organism may be liable. Such neuroses relate to—
A. Psychic faculties.B. Sensation.1. Anæsthesia.2. Hyperæsthesia.3. Hyperalgia (increased pain sense).C. Heat production.1. Elevation of temperature.2. Depression of temperature.D. Muscular tissues.1. Hypertrophy.2. Atrophy.3. Paralysis.4. Convulsions.E. Skeletal muscles.1. General convulsions.2. Chorea.3. Tetany (toe and finger jerks).F. Pharynx.1. Dyspnœa (difficult breathing).G. Œsophagus.1. Dysphagia (difficult swallowing).H. Stomach.1. Vomiting.2. Merycism (rumination).I. Intestines.1. Increased peristalsis (movement of bowel).2. Decreased peristalsis.J. Larynx.1. Dyspnœa.2. Laryngismus stridulus (croup spasm).3. Chorea.K. Bronchi.1. Asthma.2. Bronchorrhœa (excessive secretion).L. Bladder.1. Incontinence.2. Retention.M. Urethra.1. Spasmodic stricture.N. Uterus.1. Neuralgias.2. Spasms.O. Vagina.1. Vaginismus (painful spasm).P. Heart.1. Chorea.2. Disturbance of rate.3. Disturbance of rhythm.Q. Secretory organs.1. Decrease of secretion.2. Modification of composition of secretion.R. Absorptive organs.S. Elaborative organs.T. Respiratory organs. Other than those cited.U. Excretory organs.V. Reproductory organs.
Those of the genital organs only exist in precocious childhood, while still others occur, some occasionally, some very frequently.
Of the psychic neuroses, perhaps the commonest are the night terrors, which occur in ill-nourished children with great frequency. Hyperesthesia (or increased sensitiveness) is a starvation neurosis occurring especially in unrecognised scurvy. Variations of temperature, both increased and subnormal, occur in children suffering from evident in-nutrition.
Of the starvation neuroses, the commonest are muscular convulsions. Naturally enough, any muscle or any group of muscles may be affected, and the manifestations may present all the varieties of convulsive movements to which muscles are liable. Probably no child whose nutrition is perfect ever has general convulsions except as the result of actual brain disease or at the onset of some infectious process where the convulsion takes the place of the initial chill of the adult. The so-called reflex convulsions occur only in children whose nutrition is below par. In a rickety child the slight irritationproduced by an erupting tooth may be sufficient to weaken the mechanism which checks explosive action, just as in the same child it may be the determining cause of bronchorrhœa. In the healthy child teething can cause no such effect. Both thesemanifestations, the convulsions and the bronchorrhœa, are starvation neuroses. In such children many other trivial conditions may weaken the controlling mechanism.
In older children chorea, whatever be its cause, is evidently connected with the developmental process. The beneficial effects in chorea of absolute rest in bed and forced feeding are a matter of common observation. Dysphagia as a neurosis in children is uncommon. Vomiting and diarrhœa occur so frequently in infants from a wide variety of causes, that it is very difficult to say when they are merely starvation neuroses. In rickets, diarrhœa often occurs, with no adequate explanation in the conditions present in the intestinal canal, and which is an essential feature of the disease itself.
Laryngismus stridulus is a very common manifestation of muscular starvation neurosis. Spasmodic asthma occurs in ill-nourished children. Incontinence of urine in older children is often a starvation neurosis.
The younger the child the more rapid are its processes of growth. Hence in infants the results of defective nutrition are quickly manifested, and the curative effects of food arranged to supply the nutritive deficiencies also become apparent very soon. In older children with more stable tissues a defective food supply is longer borne without apparent effect; but, on the other hand, the beneficial effect of anantidotal diet becomes apparent only after a prolonged use.
The relatively simple diet of the infant makes it easy to discover the particular kind of food which is supplied in sufficient quantity, and makes the supply of the deficiency comparatively easy. But in older children with a more varied diet the defect is less readily discovered and less readily supplied.
The effects of climate, soil, and food in the production of degeneracy are first shown in the causation of general loss of nerve tone in the ancestor, often with special local expressions. This loss of nerve tone may show itself in the offspring by any type of degeneracy from nutritive defect to loss of moral tone.