The Vancouver independent. (Vancouver, W.T. [Wash.]) 1875-1910, 1883-08-02

is perfectly we'll established fact in
medical science, and is recognized as
such by the profession, and that.
acting as the remote cause, hered-
itary predisposition has prob
ably more to do with the
developement of insanity to-day than all
the assigned immediate causes put to-
gether. Visiting the iniquities of the
fathers upon the children unto the third
and fourth generation" is not a mere
metaphor of oriental language, it is a
fact; 1t was true three thousand years
ago, it is true now. We say this child
does not learn because he has no head,
but the real trouble is the father was
acephalous before him? what thousand
pities such father ever had son; the
fool-killer was All important agent in the
twilight dawn of civilization which we
miss at its MONDAY. From Lycurgus to
Christianity is an immense advance; he
cared for the race and forgot the individ.
ual; but may we not be in danger of for'
getting the race entirely in our care for
the individual? Christianity came down
from heaven with its divine mission to
the poor and the outcast, and its promise
is that ''the meek shall inherit the
EARTH" but should we not draw the line
at detectives, and stop the intermarriage
of the insane?
Impress upon those who look to you
for instruction and guidance that, while
in their tender care and sympathy for
these unfortunates, they will do we'll to
initiate the divine compassion, they
race, in their pity stop short Of marriage.
20 xEot L., al,
heredity were taught in schools other
than medical. Sins against the physical
no less than those involving the moral
nature are far reaching in their effects.
All, what moral teacher vice becomes,
when we see its last stages in a hospital
Sometimes think l will open school,
for, though am hut little of a preacher
and less of a teacher, my hospital could
furnish kindergarten with some strik-
ing object lessons. Contemplating the
misery resulting from hereditarw dis
ease alone, looking on these pitiab!e
wrecks where vice and degeneracy, in
sanity and scrofuls, have left the blight
on faces more eloquent of the truth of
tho inheritance Of sin and the wages
that it. brings than any poor words of
mine can be. / wish l could take the
young men just breaking ground for the
planting Of their wild oats, and let these
silent teachers speak to theml We SOW
the wind; ''ah, what shall the harvest
be?"
No, you do not need to remind me how
easily, when its passions are involved,
the world forgets the lessons of its phi
losophy, and AS physician I do not ex-
pect to recover Love from his blindness,
but all the more l recognize how far up
in "the glorious procession of saints and
martyrs" some souls will hereafter stand
whose lives, like their devotions, have
been single, whose silent purpose has
been that the inherited faint OF their
blood should die out from the world
with them. And we have seen in them
only single men and women, who being
SO much occupied in doing good had
found no time ito marry or be given in
marriage" and SO left no children to in
herit their many virtues. But perhaps
the Great Teacher saw those lives other
wise, and had such in mind when He said
for our instruction the words that We
are inclined to hurry over as We
read, "And some have made them
selves euhuchs for the kingdom OF
heavens sake" Too much already the
race is poisoned with hereditary faint;
yes, as we use language, there is such
thing az inherited disease; it is q sin to
conceal it; to deny it is q crime.
The fifteen minutes, for which thank
you, are over. This is, indeed, a weird
paper for teachers, az much out of place
with its detention as that of the Ancient
Mariner to the wedding guest; but if
you censure it from the educational
standpoint, my apology must be that
have erred with the old Athenian teacher
who exhibited drunken man to his chill
dren as temperance lecture.