MARRIAGES OF CONSANGUINITY.

Colonist, Volume IV, Issue 373, 21 May 1861, Page 4

MARRIAGES OF CONSANGUINITY.

Long and ample observation has sufficiently shown to physicians, to historians, and to ethnologists, that marriages of consanguinity lead to the intellectual degradation and physical degeneration of the offspring of such unions. The facts revealed by Ellis, Spurzheim, and Esquirol, displaying the frequency of mental alienation, and its hereditariuess in the great families of Franco and England are parallel with similar evidence collected by the middle classes. But the lessons which history teaches, whioh pbysiology enforces, and to whioh time has but added new authority, are easily disregarded when tbe individual, seeing iv such unions a sure means of preserving withiu a limited circle great wealth or noble titles, adding new possessions to bis line, or, perhaps, of satisfying a blind affection, trusts to the operation of what he regards as chaucea to exempt his offspring from evils which fall only upon a proportion of the children born to parents allied by blood.

It is no doubt to this reasoning that we must attribute the very numerous marriages of consanguauity which we daily behold, and it is to this doctrine that we owe also a large proportion of the idiots, the epileptics, the scrofulous, the rachitic, the enfeebled, and the incapable who afflict and burden the nation. But there is a deep lying fallacy in this reasoning. Physical laws are not capricious iv their working although they are often variable iv their manifestations.

It is not to be supposed, because all children springing from such unions are not the subjects of idiocy, of paralysis, or of rickets, that the law of physical degradation has therefore been defied with impunity. A man so begotten may be distinguished for his intelligence and for his fine physique, and others may point to him as an example contradicting the alleged evils of cocsanguinous marriage; but it is not so. Nature cannot contradict herself.

Examine first of all the children of such unions in a limited circle, and by the light even of a (ew score of facts these apparent exceptions may be interpreted and placed in harmony with the great historic law, which knows no exception and no change.

For an instance we may use the last series o facts collected by Dr. Bemiss, relating to 34such

unions,

Of these 34 marriages, 28 were between cousius of the first degree, and six between cousins of the second degree.

Of the 34 instances, the union was seven times barren, 27 times fruitful. The 27 fruitful marriages produced 191 children. Of these 191 children, 58 died shortly after birth. In the 24 cases in which the cause of death was indicated phthisis occurred 15 times, water on the brain once, couvvlsions eight times. Of the remaining children who advanced to adult age 32 were indicated as of unsound constitution and habitually sickly; 47 were deformed, or afflicted by more or less grave constitutional diseases, of whom 23 were scrofulous, four epileptic, two of unsound mind, two mutes, four idiots, two blind, two deformed, five affected with albinism, six with weak eyes, and one with chorea. Of nine no details could could be obtained. Only one-fifth remain, who were described apparently healthy and sound. But we must remember that the seeds of disease are slow to germinate, and may possibly be restrained from development by skillful management, fortunate circumstances, and care; and that men grow accustomed to their infirmities until they cease to note or regard them, and learn to look upon their cramped energies, ther limited power of endurance, their special points of weakness, and compelled observances and self-decial as a normal state of being.

We shall then, from this consideration, put less faith in tbe favorable report given as to tbe high standard of health of this small and favored remnant. Physiology teaches us, too, to recognise that the laws of nature work secretly and silently, but not capriciously. If it be once ascertained that these aud similar researches have established—not to speak of historical evidence — that the inmarriage of blood relations is a condition which injures the production of healthy cb.ldren, it is perfectly certain that not one of the children, offspring of that union, can escape from that law ; and that although opposing influences may favor them by counterbalancing or restraining the development of their sources of weakness and degeneration, yet they are placed under disadvantages from which the children of parents derived from a straDge stock are wholly free.-— Lancet.