Hormones and heredity : a discussion of the evolution of adaptations and the evolution of species / by J.T. Cunningham.

  • Cunningham, J. T. (Joseph Thomas), 1859-1935.
Date:
1921
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Hormones and heredity : a discussion of the evolution of adaptations and the evolution of species / by J.T. Cunningham. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    22/288 (page XVIII)
    xviii HORMONES AND HEREDITY of Acquired Conditions in Man.' The belief that this paper had two years' priority over the volume of Delage entitled L'Hérédité appears to have arisen from the fact that Adami consulted the biblio¬ graphical Hst in Thomson's compilation, Heredity^ 1908, where the date of Delage's work is given as 1903. But this was the second edition, the first having been pubhshed, as quoted above, in 1895, six years before the paper by Adami. Next, with regard to the claim that Adami's views as stated in the paper to which he refers were essentially the same as those brought forward by myself and others many years later, we find on reading the paper that its author discussed merely the effect of toxins in disease upon the body-cells and the germ-ceUs, causing in the offspring either various forms of arrested and imperfect development or some degree of immunity. In the latter case he argues that the action of the toxin of the disease has been to set up certain molecular changes, certain alterations in the composition of the cell-substance, so that the latter responds in a different manner when again brought into contact with the toxin. Once this modification in the cell-substance is produced, the descendants of this ceU retain the same pro¬ perties, although not permanently. Inheritance of the acquired condition has to be granted, he says, in the case of the body-cells in such cases. But this is not the question : inheritance in the proper sense of the word means the transmission to individuals of the next generation. On this point Adami says we must logically admit the action of the toxins on the germ-cells, and the individuals developed from these must, subject to the law of loss already noted, have the same properties.