Waterbury evening Democrat., 1889-08-09
"rM LIKE MY FATHER"
Tho FoolisI.ness of Persons Who Live Ul
 der an Ancestral Shadow.

der an Ancestral Shadow.
 "1'm just liko my father; l shall die voung."
 The speaker was playing tho arrant fool, and 1 told him so writes Iarkley Earker in the New York Weekly. He was c bit aillng, had been for some ronths off color. called on him in his sick room and found him much depressed. uc had the notion that he had inherited ia short-!ived consti- tution," whatever that may be- The life insurance people had asked him, in their curious catcchism, whether he resembled his father or his Elotl:cr the moro strongly, and if either, Winch. This was c rcvela- tion to him; Ee had never thought of it be- fore He concluded that hc rescmbled his father, who h.d died at thirty years of age. My friend is already forty-six. His phy- sician assured both his wife and me that | nothing gravely threatening was tho mat ter with him. We found-hiS devoted wife | and l-that his father had died of fever | contracted on the IsthmuS. But it is no use: | the poor dunce has the notion that he is to | fade away ''like his father" Of course this is nervous fatigue, nothing more nor | less 1t Is incipient nervous prostration. But the item of hercdity n the case presents a common delusion.
 | People presume on longevity as well, be- cause they "come of q long lived family" 1 Singulariy, a gentlemen boasted this other 1 extreme to mo the week before last. He was quite sure of advanced age, 'because his father, grandfather, and away back all his ancestry were long-livers." And yet as write, that very gentleman is dead
 l am certain that both hope and fear are inspired, without reason and against req son, by the popular notion. It may be true that longevity or short life is inherited; but | the trace is 50 feeble that i'll the battle of life | it Is not worth either expecting or dreading l If you get such notion into your head it Is 0 fatuous demon. Your father, for in-
 stance, died at sixty years of age. You will dread the epoch. You will erect a stone wall of fatalism for yourself right there. Unconsciously to yourself you will
 continually be calculating upon it with ap-
 prehension. You will not talk about it., even to your wife, till you have approached | your ifty-eighth year; then, as you get a trifle worn, and perhaps sick, some day, you will let out your fear. It will torture your loved ones; it will baf11e your physi-
 clans as they wonder what can ail you, and you arc ashamed to tell them. It will actu- ally cripple your nervous force, subtract
 from your stock of vitality; and there is lit
 tic daIht that the pure, unmixed foolish ness may hasten your death. Your father will have had nothing to do with your death; but you may hasten your own death by psychic depletion There is far moro evidence that men do actually cause their own premature death by apprehension than that {. hereditary limit causes it.
 To presume that you inherit the longevity of grandfather who lived to tour-score Is even moro absurd. It may not have been vitality with the old gentleman at all He
 may have had no moro powerful organism
 than ordinary men. But q quiet, uncyent-
 ful lifa exceptionally free from any heavy
 strain, may nave kept bis hcart throbblng
 so long. If you arc hard pushed anA oyef-
 doing; if you solace your alarm by refer
 ring your guilty mind back to the shadowy
 graudsire rathNr than taking wholesome
 rest, the probabilities are that you viii
 snap your handspring before you know It.
 Tho theory will mako one more victim, and
 you are the man. Theory is one thing but
 facts arc better. Quite likely your grand
 mother will tell you that you look and act
 older at forty-hve than her husband did a
 sixty. You live ill q more exciting and ex
 acting age. You are 8 city man; he was (
 country pan. You like fancy dishGsj hf
 homely food. You sleep mornings; he
 nights. You are frettcd by money, as by
 politics; he was fretted by nothing worst than an unruly OK 9 shower on his new
 mown hay. You arc housed in shop, ol
 factory, or office, with the devltalized air O.
 modern furnace heat; he, this noble octo ) genarian, lived among mountains, O. breathed the breath of the wide, wide sea
 Do not presume on the venerable fellow: that went before you; there is | temptation ) and snare III it every time.
 Every man must sail his own ship. IT
 the name of tho kind Creator, do not thinl you are gong to cough your life away be . cause ''consumption is hereditary in ou family" Facts show that the decided ma jor ity of victims of this terrible malady are tn, , original cases; no taint can be discovered in ancestry. Think of it! The majority o consumptives, reassert, arc the first case:
 in the family. l have 1t on good au ! thority in pulmonary maladies that de ! cidedly the vast majority of the offspring O consumptives finally die of other diseases It is not to be denied that there is law 0 heredity in disease. But the children pre- , disposed to consumption, for instance, being
 forewarned, arc forearmed to caution; talk , ing excellent care of themselves they out , last their more thoughtless neighbors
 Probably over eighty per cent. of the insane are original cases; that Is, i'll neither brancl of the family, within three generations, cal be found an insane ancestor. will not at tempt figures, but medical authority tells u
 that disease of the heart, the liver, the kid ney is almost always original.
 } Reader, live under no ancestral shadow , Live in your own sunshine. A mercifu , Creator has given us each our day. Th Ucdu C.u uClIucE uluuCT HUT uclp us muCu , We have our chance. Each life Is uniqu,
 in its own individual beauty or deformty It is my fathers good example, which, ad
 miring, l purposely copy, which benefit
 me. It is the heritage of his worthy nam,
 that helps me, moro than blood or gold. I : is the subtle copying of his virtues CT vice t that no doubt is powerful impulse. To b. like my father in character is quite possible } but even this l must seek after with reso 3 lute purpose. The bugbear of hereditar. brief life Is too shocking, is cruel fetish o : quasi-science that would be glad to driv
 out of the home of many sufferer. There l. Is, however, this curious discovery that have made: Many people seem to actual, |. regard such respect for their hereditar, j. bents in the nature of fllial piety. The, j. think 1t sacreligious to die of any but an in \ heredited malady. They in sist on it.
 Curious Transmittal of Disease.
 In 1S46 boy of eight years, the brothe
 of the narrator's wife, was taken down wit scarlet fever and died, says writer in tn Boston Post. One of the principal amuse