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other an unhealthy homozygot, we can expert that all the children will be healthy;
but it should be noted: all have the propensity that is to say; all are heterozy*
gots. Three of these children having attained mature age, emigrated to Australia,
and married (not to relations). Half the number of the children of these mar*
riages will be heterozygots. When these marry in Australia, 50 % of their
children will be heterozygots, and so on. Let us imagine that 2 brothers or
sisters, who are both heterozygots in time to come — e. g. in a hundred years
or more — remove with their families to a distant part of the country. Their
children perhaps grow up without having any neighbours; and then it is highly
probable that cousins marry, that is to say, new sources of the disease, appear
there occasioned by such marriages, which result in a fresh appearance in the
offspring, of myoklonus epilepsy (see generation VII in the table).
Parents, who see such a disease break out in one of the children, are very
horrified. They have most likely forgotten long ago, that they originated from
Sweden. And they probably know nothing of the family disease in Blekinge.
They resort to a doctor for help and advice. The doctor asks them the reason
of this disease in the child. The parents would give then, as now, the first
»local» reasons, which came to hand.
We will give as an example, what a doctor in these days, would hear from
the parents: A child has perhaps been out playing, on a very warm day, and
drunk cold water. The first attack occurs the same night. The parents think
that the heat, and the drinking of cold water, are the cause of the illness, and
tell the doctor this. Or they suggest that the child has eaten poisonous berries
etc., etc. The doctor, who perhaps has an inkling of the true cause, probably
enquires. »Do you think that it may be a hereditary disease.» He gets a de*
cidedly negative reply as follows. »We know nobody in our family who has ever
had the disease.» Here the matter is supposed to be settled. If it is a really
elever and »schooled» physician, he is in a position to inform them, that medical
science has discovered long ago, that the disease is decidedly hereditary, although
it has only appeared in solitary cases, that is to say, in a certain percentage
amongst children, if both the parents have a propensity for the disease, otherwise
only the propensity is inherited. Now if the parents are in a low state of
eulture, the doctor cannot convince them of this, at least not as a rule, in
these days.
They retain their idea of the importance of local causes, and think the doctor
does not know his business. They resort to a quack*doctor, who has, as they
think, a better knowledge of the disease in question. This is the usual idea
amongst ignorant and unintelligent people.
* *
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