Their babies grew up without doctors,
without pasteurized milk, without ice, without many sanitary
precautions, usually on rough food. But they had one advantage which no
amount of applied science can give after birth--namely, good heredity.
They had inherited exceptionally good constitutions.
It is not by accident that inherited longevity in a family is associated
with low mortality of its children. The connection between the two facts
was first discovered by Mary Beeton and Karl Pearson in their pioneer
work on the inheritance of duration of life. They found that high infant
mortality was associated with early death of parents, while the
offspring of long-lived parents showed few deaths in childhood. The
correlation of the two facts was quite regular, as will be evident from
a glance at the following tables prepared by A. Ploetz:
LENGTH OF LIFE OF MOTHERS AND CHILD-MORTALITY OF THEIR DAUGHTERS.
ENGLISH QUAKER FAMILIES, DATA OF BEETON AND PEARSON, ARRANGED BY
PLOETZ
Year of life in which mothers died At
all
0-38 39-53 54-68 69-83 84 up ages
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