Degeneracy: Its Causes, Signs and Results

Considered as a condition hurtful to the type, the conception of degeneracy may be said to appear even in the precursors of man, since animals destroy soon after birth offspring...

The attempt 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 d...

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 a...

Byron has sung[109] of the old popular belief in the advantages of cross-breeding, which arose originally in the practice of exogamy (marriage outside the tribe), or, more often...

Defoe, in his _Trueborn Englishman_, outlines a factor of great importance in degeneracy.[133] Race intermixture is much more common than is generally believed, owing to that et...

The toxic agents which influence the race toward degeneracy, exert that deterioration in a mode which closely resembles that of the degenerative powers of the acute and chronic...

Among the 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 r...

Among the 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 deci...

Like all factors of degeneracy, school strain evinces itself in a systemic nervous exhaustion manifest along lines of least resistance, as in the neuroses of Christopher. The fi...

The cranium or skull is a development in part of the vertebrae or bones forming the backbone, and in part of dermal or membranous bones, which of old in reptiles, as in the alli...

The development of the face depends, as I have already shown, upon the enlargement and fusion of the mouth and nose cavities, and upon the later partial separation of the nose a...

Each part or sense organ may, independently of the face as a whole, exhibit signs of degeneracy. The palate, lip, nose, eye, and ear have their own expressions of degeneracy. Th...

Next to the ears, the jaws and teeth (as was to be expected from the variability of these organs in allied animals) are most affected by degeneracy. This is particularly true of...

As degeneracy checks the natural course of embryonic development it necessarily finds expression in the body as well as in the skull. One most striking condition is that by whic...

The hair of the head and body may never develop from the condition of down (lanugo) present in the new-born. The hair over the sexual organs may alone remain in this condition,...

One illustration, and a very striking one, of the influence of degeneracy on the brain is the durencephalous child which so often appears in degenerate families. Here the cerebr...

In the mental and moral degeneracies there is a complete transition from the durencephalic monster through the microcephalus, the idiot, the imbecile, and the feeble-minded to t...

Since, as Weismann[263] admits, interference with the nutrition of the germ plasm will result in the production of variations, the fact is evident that even according to the Wei...

This is not only one of the finest, but probably one of the longest novels ever written, occupying, as it does in this edition, 1600 large and closely printed pages. Notwithstan...