INTERMARRIAGE OF BLOOD RELATIONS.
With regard to deaf-mutism, says the Medical Press, statistics show, for the most part, that the closer the degree of relationship between the parents, the more numerous are the deaf-mute children born. For example, one marriage between an aunt and nephew produced three deaf-mutes. Four marriages between uncle and niece produced eleven deaf-mutes; twenty-six marriages between first cousins produced thirty-eight deaf-mutes; sixteen marriages between second cousins produced twenty-eight deaf-mutes; forty-seven marriages between blood relatives produced seventy-two deaf-mutes. These are important facts, which leave no measure of doubt as to the influence of the intermarriage of blood relations in causing deaf-mutism. But just in the same way as consanguineous marriages should be avoided, so also should the intermarriage of persons tainted with hereditary disease be discouraged.