From Lawson Tait 29 July 1881
Birmingham Liberal Club, | Corporation Street.
July 29/81
My Dear Sir,
I have just read your paper on “Inheritance”.1
Will you forgive me if I point two possibilities of fallacy in it? I am sure you will.
The case of the nails is in all probability a case of syphilis, as the peculiarity died out in the same generation with succeeding children. The disease is well known to be a variety of tertiary syphilis and if such a case had appeared in a medical journal I think it would unquestionably have been set down as due to that cause.2
Guinea pigs. Brown-Sequard’s observations are quite worthless, for under certain circumstances of diet every other guinea pig has epilepsy. I have kept them for years by the hundred and I could have epilepsy abundant or not as I liked, by giving them moist or dry food & varieties. It was not hereditary & it as often as not could be induced on irritation of the “epileptic regions” of B. S. It certainly had nothing whatever to do with division of the cord or of the sciatic nerves.3
I have published all this somewhere but I cannot recall it4
Yours faithfully | Lawson Tait
Footnotes
Bibliography
Brown-Séquard, Charles Édouard. 1860. Hereditary transmission of an epileptiform affection accidentally produced. [Read 2 February 1860.] Proceedings of the Royal Society of London 10 (1859–60): 297–8.
Lancereaux, Etienne. 1868–9. A treatise on syphilis: historical and practical. Translated by George Whitley. London: New Sydenham Society.
Summary
Points out what he believes to be two errors in CD’s paper on inheritance [Nature 24 (1881): 257; Collected papers 2: 230–1].
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-13257
- From
- Robert Lawson (Lawson) Tait
- To
- Charles Robert Darwin
- Sent from
- Birmingham Liberal Club
- Source of text
- DAR 178: 42
- Physical description
- ALS 3pp
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 13257,” accessed on 6 October 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-13257.xml