The Lexington intelligencer. [volume] (Lexington, Mo.) 1901-1949, 1902-11-29
INHERITED HABITS.
A washington Physician Says That MAJ
Biting Is One Of Them.

AAlt MAuoAANJ oA~oo ~
alienists who argue that there is no
such thing as the hereditary trans
mission Of human traits and practices
are distinctly wrong in one respect
that 1 know Of" remarked a we'll
known Washington medical man tos
Washington Star reporter. Look
at these finger nails Of mine. You
see that they are, every one of them,
bitten down to the quick. They've
been that way ever since can rOmem-
Der, in spite of everything ] can do
Pye resorted to all of the schemes,
that have been invented to stop peo7
pie from gnawing on their nails, and
yet here are my ~disgracefully bittenl
nails to show how ineffective such
schemes are, in my case, at any rate.
"Now, my mother before me bit
her finger nails in precisely the same
fashion. She had a beautiful pair Of
hands, with long, slender, tapering
fingers, and it was n Of the miser-
les of her existence that she simply
could not give up the habit ofruining
her nails by biting them. Not only
that, but my mother told me that
her father inveterately bit his nails,
and her father, in turn, told her that
his mother tried all her life to do
away with the practice Of biting her
nails, and without any success what
ever. So, you see, that in my case the
practice is distinctly hereditary. My
curiosity as to this matter led me to
: investigate it in the cases Of other
: persons, all of them in my practice,
who had the %nailbiting habit, and l
: found that in every case | tackled
their immediate progenitors, on one
: side or the other, had the same habit.
Q ''There's no reason whatever why
a / should bite my nails. just do it,
t that's all. 1t is claimed by some spe-
0 cialists in nervous diseases that the
g practice springs from IN inherent
species Of nervousness, but / know
t that that can't be true, for | am ac-
d tually the least nervous human be-
ing on the top Of the globe, so far as
| know. SO far from being nervous,
l simply have no nerves, to employ
the common phrase, My mother was
It the most self-contained person Of her
d sex l wei knew, and yet, as | say,
she constantly, to her never-ending
It grief and modification, ruined her
s. finger nails with her teeth. ! have
r long since given up trying to conquer
d the practice, which, being an invol-
k untary and unconscious one, is almost
N impossible to control. | have, with
lie the most acute difficulty, eontrived
lie at times to let four or five Of my nails
I'd grow, permitting them to attain an
id almost foolish length, because ! was
in SO proud of them, but at the same
time that these long ones looked like
d. the hsoked finger nails Of an Hindoc
Id mahatma the other ones were, al
IN usual, gnawed down to the quick. I've
r. tried the scheme of dipping my fin.
Sc ger tips in a colorless and extremely
lie bitter liquid, so that when ! put thE
or nails to my lips to bite on them I'd
ho be reminded Of my resolution by thu
bitter taste of my fingers. But lfoun(
to it just as hard TO remember to inces
Nv sanity keep my finger tips dipped il
n in this fluid as il was to remembei
It, not to bite the nails, and SO, Their
he l was. Also, for a time, | employees
on the plan Of keeping my finger tip
lis incased in patent metal tips, mad
lst for the purpose, but these aroused S
much curiosity amSng my patients
and forced me to answer 50 man
questions about them that | had t
nd. give up that plan. Moreover, tn
same difficulty about remembering
,as keep the things on was always pret
] ent.
we Treeently saw it stated in Frenc
nut medical journal that fully two-thirC
Ike Of all Of the school children of Franc
it are addicted to the practice Of bitin
their finger nails, and the article e.
.ad pressed alarm over this fact, as shoH
vas ing that nervous diseases must cons
SIS q%uently be undermining the FrenC
SO race. While | don't exactly agrO
nv. with this latter proposition, Il
by showing is surely a curious one.
Jus very small proportion of the scho
children of this country, as far
ity my observation goes, bite their mai
n.y. Nail biting is a habit that is mu,
an more easily dealt with in childrI
Tho than X * in the eases Of grown nc