Heredity : a psychological study of its phenomena, laws, causes and consequences / from the French of Th. Ribot.

  • Ribot, Th. (Théodule), 1839-1916.
Date:
1875
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Heredity : a psychological study of its phenomena, laws, causes and consequences / from the French of Th. Ribot. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    mitted by heredity. But, unfortunately, we can study them only under the specific form. There, however, there is no room for doubt, for heredity transmits them all without exception. In the human species, savage races have a characteristic acuteness of smell which allies them to animals. In North America the Indians can follow their enemies or their game by the scent, and in the Antilles the maroon negroes distinguish by the scent a white man's trail from a negro's.^ The whole negro race has this sense developed to an extraordinary degree. Whether this results from a great development of the olfactive , membrane, or from the more frequent exercise of this sense, in any case, this innate or acquired faculty is preserved by heredity. The specific and individual varieties of taste are transmissible, like those of smell. Hybridism gives curious examples of this among animals. ' The swine,' says Burdach, ' has a veiy strong liking for barley; the wild boar will not touch it, feeding on herbage and leaves. From a cross between a domestic sow and a wild boar come young some of which have an aversion for barley, like the wild boar, while the others have a taste for it, like the common hog.' In man, anaesthesia of taste, and antipathy for certain flavours, are hereditary. Schook, the author of a treatise entitled De Aversione Casei belonged to a family to nearly all the members of which the smell of cheese was unendurable, and some of whom were thrown into convulsions by it.^ Such antipathy is very often hereditary. ' In a family of our acquaintance, the father and mother like cheese ; the grandmother had an extreme dislike for it. Four of the children share in the same dislike.'^ An exclusive liking for vegetable food and repugnance to flesh is of very rare occurrence, but it is transmissible. ' A soldier of the Engineers, who derived from his father an invincible repug- nance to all food composed of animal substances, Avas unable, during the i8 months he spent Avith his regiment, to overcome this aversion, and was obliged to quit the service.'^ Finally, P. Lucas, following Zimmermann and Gall, gives the 1 Dktionnaire des Sciences Midicales. Art. 'Odorat.' ^ I 3 Lucas, L 389. * Gazette des Trtbunaux, 21 Mai, 1844-