References
“Your Health by Logan Clendening, M.D.
AS TO WHAT CHILDREN DO AND DO NOT INHERIT
A most valuable book is called You and Heredity, by Amram Scheinfeld and Dr. Morton D. Schweitzer (Frederick A. Stokes Co., New York). The authors point out that the effect of heredity has been discussed at great length about animals, but very little has been written which could be understood by the layman about heredity in man – in other words, you.
I take the opportunity of excerpting certain interesting features of the volume.
What we do not inherit: Our children are not affected by any change that takes place within our body cells. Imagine that you have a large, life-size plastic statue of yourself, and inside of it is a small, hermetically sealed container filled with millions of microscopic replicas of this statue. Suppose, then, that you pull out of shape and enlarge the nose of the big statue. Could that, by any means you could conceive, automatically enlarge all the noses of the millions of little statues inside?
They have bound the feet of Chinese women for centuries, and yet all Chinese female babies are born with normal feet.
You cannot improve your child’s mind by educating yourself. Your children would be born with exactly the same mental equipment even if you have acquired a string of degrees from Yale to Oxford.
The age of the male parent makes no difference in the health of the children. A man of ninety-five is still capable of producing virile children and there are records of men who did. The children are the same in their hereditary factors as if the father were sixteen.
Pass on Accomplishments?
‘Can I pass on to my child any of the accomplishments or improvements I have made in myself?’ The answer is, ‘Yes,’ you can pass on a great deal, but not by heredity – by training and environment.
Animals not of the same variety, but of related kind, can product offspring, but the offspring are sterile. The most familiar case is the horse and the donkey, which produce the mule, but the mule can produce no offspring. All human beings, however, are fertile with one another. The smallest pygmy and the tallest Nordic could produce a perfectly normal child, because all human beings, regardless of race, type, color or any other classifications are, as members of the same species, compatible with one another.
At the World’s Fair they have a machine that solves all the hereditary problems for a young couple contemplating marriage. A small figure having the characteristics of the mother – blue eyes, brown hair, etc. – is shown, and another shows the characteristics of the father. Punch the button beneath these and soon there is a picture of what the child will look like. Thus, you can eliminate all chance.”
– Charleston News and Courier, Charleston, South Carolina, 12 Oct 1939
