Disease and Its Causes by William Thomas Councilman (top novels .txt) 📖

around parts constricting them or even cutting them off, and the membrane around the child may become adherent to certain parts and prevent the development of these. The extrinsic causes are more operative the more unfavorable is the environment of the mother. Malformations are more common in illegitimate children than in legitimate and more common in alcoholic mothers; there is an unfavorable environment of poverty in both cases, added to in the latter and usually in the former by the injurious action of the alcohol.

The more extensive malformations have no effect on heredity, because the subjects of them are incapable of procreation. The malformations which arise from the accidents of pregnancy and which are compatible with a perfectly normal germ are in the nature of acquired characteristics and are not inherited. Those malformations, however, which are due to qualities in the germinal material itself are inherited, and certain of them with remarkable persistence. There are instances in which the slight malformation consisting in an excess of fingers or toes has persisted through many generations. It may occasionally lapse in a generation to reappear later. In certain cases, notably in the bleeders, the inheritance is transmitted by the female alone, in other cases by the sexes equally, but there are no cases of transmission by the male line only. It is evident that when the same malformation affects both the male and the female line the hereditary influence is much stronger. A case has been related to me in which most of the inhabitants in a remote mountain valley in Virginia where there has been much intermarriage have one of the joints of the fingers missing. There is a very prevalent idea that in close intermarriage in families variations and malformations often unfortunate for the individual are more common. All experimental evidence obtained by interbreeding of animals shows that close interbreeding is not productive of variation, but that variations existing in the breed become accentuated. Variations either advantageous or disadvantageous for the race or individual may either of them become more prevalent by close intermarriage. It seems, however, to have been shown by the customs of the human race that very close intermarriage is disadvantageous.

Eugenics, which signifies an attempt at the betterment of the race by the avoidance of bad heredity, has within recent years attracted much attention and is of importance. Some of its advocates have become so enthusiastic as to believe that it will be possible to breed men as cattle and ultimately to produce a race ideally perfect. It is true that by careful selection and regulation of marriage certain variations, whether relating to coarse bodily form or to the less obvious changes denoted by function, can be perpetuated and strengthened. That the Semitic race excels in commerce is probably due to the fact that the variation of the brain which affected favorably the mental action conducive to this form of activity, was favorable for the race in the hostile environment in which it was usually placed and transmitted and strengthened by close intermarriage. It is impossible, however, to form a conception of what may be regarded as an ideal type of the human species. The type which might be ideal in a certain environment might not be ideal in another, and environment is probably of equal importance with the material. The eugenics movement has enormously stimulated research into heredity by the methods both of animal experimentation and observation, and study of heredity in man. As in all of the beginning sciences there is not the close inter-relation of observed facts and theory, but there is excess of theory and dearth of facts. Certain considerations, however, seem to be evident. It would seem to be evident that individuals should be healthy and enabled to maintain themselves in the environment in which they are placed, but the qualities which may enable an individual successfully to adapt himself to factory life, or life in the crowds and strong competition of the city, may not be, and probably are not, qualities which are good for the race in general or for his immediate descendants. At present our attempts to influence heredity should be limited to the heredity of disease only. We can certainly say that intermarriage between persons who have tuberculosis or in whose families the disease has prevailed is disadvantageous for the offspring; the same holds true for insanity and for nervous diseases of all sorts, for forms of criminality, for alcoholism, and for those diseases which are long enduring and transmitted by sexual contact such as syphilis and gonorrhoea. It is of importance that the facts bearing on the hereditary transmission of disease should become of general knowledge, in order that the dangers may be known and voluntarily avoided. No measures of preventive medicine are successful which are not supported by a public educated to appreciate their importance, and the same holds true of eugenics. How successful will be public measures leading to the prevention of offspring in the obviously unfit by sterilization of both males and females is uncertain. It is doubtful whether public sentiment at the present time will allow the measure to be thoroughly carried out. Some results in preventing unfit heredity may be attained by the greater extension of asylum life, but the additional burden of this upon the labor of the people would be difficult to bear. At best such measures would only be carried out in the lower class of society.

Chapter XI

Chronic Diseases.—Disease Of The Heart As An Example.—The Structure And Function Of The Heart.—The Action Of The Valves.—The Production Of Heart Disease By Infection.—The Conditions Produced In The Valves.—The Manner In Which Disease Of The Valves Interferes With Their Function.—The Compensation Of Injury By Increased Action Of Heart.—The Enlargement Of The Heart.—The Result Of Imperfect Work Of The Heart.—Venous Congestion.—Dropsy.—Chronic Disease Of The Nervous System.—Insanity.—Relation Between Insanity And Criminality.—Alcoholism And Syphilis Frequent Causes Of Insanity.—The Direct And Indirect Causes Of Nervous Diseases.—The Relation Between Social Life And Nervous Diseases.—Functional And Organic Disease.—Neurasthenia.

Chronic diseases are diseases of long duration and which do not tend to result in complete recovery; in certain cases a cause of disease persists in the body producing constant damage, or in the course of disease some organ or organs of the body are damaged beyond the capacity of repair, and the imperfect action of such damaged organs interferes with the harmonious inter-relation of organs and the general well-being of the body. The effect of damage in producing chronic disease may not appear at once, for the great power of adaptation of organs and the exercise of reserve force may for a time render the damage imperceptible; when, however, age or the supervention of further injury diminishes the power of adaptation the condition of disease becomes evident. Chronic disease may be caused by parasites when the relation between host and parasite is not in high degree inimical, as in tuberculosis, gonorrhoea, syphilis, most of the trypanosome diseases and the diseases produced by the higher parasites. In certain cases the chronic disease represents really a series of acute onsets; thus in the case of the parasites there may be periods of complete quiescence of infection but not recovery, the parasites remaining in the body and attacking when the defences of the body are in some way weakened. In such cases there may be temporary immunity produced by each excursion of the disease, but the immunity is not permanent nor is the parasite destroyed. There is a further connection between chronic disease and infection in that the damage to the organs, which is the great factor underlying chronic disease, is so often the result of an infection.

The infectious diseases are those of early life; chronic disease, on the other hand, is most common in the latter third of life. This is due to the fact that in consequence of the general wear of the body this becomes less resistant, less capable of adaptation, and organic injury, which in the younger individual would be in some way compensated for, becomes operative. The territory of chronic disease is so vast that not even a superficial review of the diseases coming under this category can be attempted in the limits of this book, and it will be best to give single examples only, for the same general principles apply to all. One of the best examples is given in chronic disease of the heart.

The heart is a hollow organ forming a part of the blood vascular system and serving to give motion to the blood within the vessels by the contraction of its strong muscular walls. It is essentially a pump, and, as in a pump, the direction which the fluid takes when forced out of its cavity by the contraction of the walls diminishing or closing the cavity space, is determined by valves. The contraction of the heart, which takes place seventy to eighty times in a minute, is automatic and is due to the essential quality of the muscle which composes it. The character, frequency and force of contraction, however, can be influenced by the nervous system and by the direct action of substances upon the heart muscle. The heart is divided by a longitudinal partition into a right and left cavity, and these cavities are divided by transverse septa, with openings in them controlled by valves, each into two chambers termed auricle and ventricle. The auricle and ventricle on each side are completely separated.

The circulation of the blood through the heart is as follows: The blood, which in the veins of the body is flowing towards the heart, passes by two channels, which respectively receive the blood from the upper and lower part of the body, into the right auricle. When this becomes distended it contracts, forcing the blood into the right ventricle; the ventricle then contracts and sends the blood into the arteries of the lungs, the passage of blood into the auricle being prevented by valves which close the opening between auricle and ventricle when the latter contracts upon its contents. When the ventricle empties by its contraction the wall relaxes and the back flow from the artery is prevented by crescentic-shaped valves placed where the artery joins the ventricle. A similar arrangement of valves is on the left side of the heart. The pressure given the blood by the contraction of the right ventricle sends it through the lungs; from these, after it has been oxygenated, it passes into the left auricle, then into the left ventricle and from this into the great artery of the body, the aorta, which gives off branches supplying the capillaries of all parts of the body. Both of the auricles and both of the ventricles contract at the same, time, the ventricular contraction following closely upon the contraction of the auricles. Contraction or systole is followed by a pause or diastole during which the blood flows from the veins into the auricles. The work which the right ventricle accomplishes is very much less than that of the left, and the right ventricle has a correspondingly thinner wall. The size of the heart is influenced by the size and the occupation of the individual being larger in the large individual than in the small, and larger in the active and vigorous than in the inactive. Generally speaking, the heart is about as large as the closed fist of its possessor.

Imperfections of the heart which interfere with its action may be the result of failure of development or disease. An imperfect heart which can, however, fully meet the limited demands made upon it in intra-uterine life, may be incapable of the work placed upon it in extra-uterine life. Children with imperfectly formed hearts may be otherwise perfect at birth, but they have a bluish color due to the imperfect supply of the blood with oxygen, and are known as blue babies. The condition becomes progressively worse due to the progressive demands made upon the heart, and death takes place