I remember reading somewhere that he did those studies because a bunch of his kids died young and he wondered if the inbreeding had something to do with it.
Nah. Most of their children were entirely healthy and happy and grew to become successful adults. 2 died of ill health during infancy, which in the 1840s wasn’t uncommon. And one of them was because he had Down’s Syndrome due to the mother being 48 at the time of his birth.
It was the death of his second daughter Annie that affected him and he blamed himself for her death of from tuberculosis, wrongly believing it was a family trip to the beach which caused her to catch a cold.
I remember reading somewhere that he did those studies because a bunch of his kids died young and he wondered if the inbreeding had something to do with it.
Nah. Most of their children were entirely healthy and happy and grew to become successful adults. 2 died of ill health during infancy, which in the 1840s wasn’t uncommon. And one of them was because he had Down’s Syndrome due to the mother being 48 at the time of his birth.
It was the death of his second daughter Annie that affected him and he blamed himself for her death of from tuberculosis, wrongly believing it was a family trip to the beach which caused her to catch a cold.