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