Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 228, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 September 1913 — First-Born Are the Weakest. [ARTICLE]

First-Born Are the Weakest.

Primogeniture has just received another hard knpek. It is several years since Dr. W. C. Rivers of London, in studying the statistics of a great sanatorium, observed that among consumptive patients the first-born provide a larger number of subjects than any of the other children. Pips. Karl Pearson and Professors Brehmer and Riffe*! collected a vast mass of statistics in England and Germany and fully River’s observation. Brehmer had been teaching that the first-born children were the strongest, but he proved that the was true. A medical authority states that not only tuberculosis but "insanity and criminality show a preponderating incidence among the eldest children,” and quotes Professor Pearson’s statement that the earlier members of a family are more likely that) the younger to inherit constitutional defects. It adds that a tendency td coddle, pamper and indulge the first child may account for a part of 1U vulnerability to disease. i ,