Also the fact that consumptives so
frequently spring from neurotic parentage and the victims of
dissipation, especially alcoholic, still farther goes to show that the
hereditary element is essentially a reduced power of resistance to
formative evils, and that as a negative condition it may hold the
balance of power in focusing the forces. Thus, heredity, in disease,
can be understood as in no sense implying a specific force, but rather
an atonic or susceptible condition, varying in its precise character
and producing a _pars minoris resistentiae_--a special weakness in a
special way.
That the germ _bacillus_ does not originate consumption there can be
no doubt, unless consumption is not to be regarded as a disease until
it is full fledged, for otherwise the germ would be present in the
earlier formations, as well as the later, which, according to good
authority, is not the case. But that this parasite has a special
affinity for consumptive tissue there is no question, and that it
thrives therein with great rapidity, hastening retrogressive changes,
is also to be granted. But, as yet, this is all we are entitled to
believe.
We thus see that the lines of successful treatment must be both
constitutional and local; that the constitutional cannot be specific,
and the strictly local cannot be curative.
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