Chapter I

The first step towards the reduction of disease is, beginning at the beginning, to provide for the health of the unborn. The error, commonly entertained, that marriageable men and women have nothing to consider except wealth, station, or social relationships, demands correction. The offspring of marriage, the most precious of all fortunes, deserves surely as much forethought as is bestowed on the offspring of the lower animals. If the intermarriage of disease were considered in the same light as the intermarriage of poverty, the hereditary transmission of disease, the basis of so much misery in the world, would be at an end in three or at most four generations.