ited upon the parents for
their sin. Naturally the idea became proverbial, and in some places it
has influenced the civil law.

[Footnote 4: Child, "On Marriages of Consanguinity," in
_Medico-Chirurgical Review_, April, 1862, p. 469.]

Perhaps the first printed discussion of the subject in America is from
the pen of Noah Webster, in an essay which should be as interesting to
the spelling reformer as to the sociologist.[5] He writes: "It iz no
crime for brothers and sisters to intermarry, except the fatal
consequences to society; for were it generally practised, men would
become a race of pigmies. It iz no crime for brothers' and sisters'
children to intermarry, and this iz often practised; but such near
blood connections often produce imperfect children. The common peeple
hav hence drawn an argument to proov such connections criminal;
considering weakness, sickness and deformity in the offspring az
judgements upon the parents. Superstition iz often awake when reezon
iz asleep."

[Footnote 5: Webster, _Collection of Essays and Fugitiv Writings on
Moral, Historical, Political and Religious Subjects_, 1790, p. 322.]

From about 1855 to 1880 much was written about the effect of
consanguineal interbreeding. One of the first contributions came from
America. In 1858 Dr. S.M. Bemiss, of Louisville, Kentucky, reported to
the American Medical Association the results of his investigation of
833 cases of consanguineous marriage.[6] His compilation remains to
this day the largest single piece of direct statistical work on the
subject. Unfortunately, however, his statistics have a strong, if
unintentional, bias which seriously affects their value. In France one
of the earliest discussions was by M. Boudin,[7] who evidently
obtained the Bemiss report (attributing it to Dr. O.W. Morris, who had
quoted freely from Bemiss),[8] and enlarged greatly upon its
fallacies. He also collected statistics of the deaf-mutes in Paris,
and, by an amazing manipulation of figures, "demonstrated" that
consanguinity of the parents was the cause of nearly one-third of the
cases of congenital deafness. The savants of the Societe
d'Anthropologie took sides and the debate became very entertaining.
Finally M. Dally came to the rescue, and published some very sane and
logical articles which avoided both extremes, and first advanced the
theory that any ill effects of consanguineous marriage should be
attributed to the intensification of inherited character