s
or her offspring more vigor than he originally possessed. It is
therefore probable that the children of a considerable percentage of
tuberculous parents would not possess the same degree of resisting power
against tuberculosis, or any other infection, as the average individual.

It is doubtful whether this factor of inherited lowered resistance plays
any very important part in the propagation of tuberculosis, partly
because it is comparatively seldom that consumptive marries consumptive,
and such tendencies to lowered vigor and vitality as may be transmitted
by one parent will be neutralized by the other; partly also because, by
the superb and beneficent logic of nature, the pedigree of any disease
is of the most mushroom and insignificant length, while the pedigree of
health stretches back to the very dawn of time. In the struggle for
dominance which takes place between the germ cells of the father and
those of the mother, the chances are at least ten to one in favor of
the old ancestral traits of vigor, of resisting power, and of survival.
How deeply this idea is implanted in the convictions of the scientific
world, the bitterly and widely debated biologic question whether
acquired characters or peculiarities can under any circumstances be
inherited clearly shows. Victory for the present rests with those who
deny the possibility of such inheritance, and disease is emphatically an
acquired character.

Truth here, as everywhere, probably lies between the extremes, and both
biologists and the students of disease have arrived at practically the
same working compromise, namely, that while no gross defect, such as a
mutilation, nor definite disease factor, such as a germ, nor even a
cancer, can possibly be inherited, yet, inasmuch as the two cells, which
by their development form the new individual, are nourished by the blood
of the maternal body, influences which affect the nutritiousness or
healthfulness of that blood may unfavorably influence the development of
the offspring.

Disease cannot be inherited any more than a mutilating defect, but the
results of both, in so far as they affect the nutrition of the offspring
in the process of formation, may be transmitted, though to a very much
smaller extent than we formerly believed. In the case of tuberculosis,
if the mother, during the months that she is building up the body and
framework of a child, is in a state of reduced or lowered nutrition on
account of consumpti