The Descent of Man | Page 9

(4. A Reviewer has criticised ('British Quarterly Review,' Oct. 1st, 1871,
page 472) what I have here said with much severity and contempt; but as I do not use the
term identity, I cannot see that I am greatly in error. There appears to me a strong analogy
between the same infection or contagion producing the same result, or one closely similar,
in two distinct animals, and the testing of two distinct fluids by the same chemical
reagent.) of their tissues and blood, both in minute structure and composition, far more
plainly than does their comparison under the best microscope, or by the aid of the best
chemical analysis. Monkeys are liable to many of the same non-contagious diseases as
we are; thus Rengger (5. 'Naturgeschichte der Saugethiere von Paraguay,' 1830, s. 50.),
who carefully observed for a long time the Cebus Azarae in its native land, found it liable
to catarrh, with the usual symptoms, and which, when often recurrent, led to consumption.
These monkeys suffered also from apoplexy, inflammation of the bowels, and cataract in
the eye. The younger ones when shedding their milk-teeth often died from fever.
Medicines produced the same effect on them as on us. Many kinds of monkeys have a
strong taste for tea, coffee, and spiritous liquors: they will also, as I have myself seen,
smoke tobacco with pleasure. (6. The same tastes are common to some animals much
lower in the scale. Mr. A. Nichols informs me that he kept in Queensland, in Australia,
three individuals of the Phaseolarctus cinereus; and that, without having been taught in
any way, they acquired a strong taste for rum, and for smoking tobacco.) Brehm asserts
that the natives of north-eastern Africa catch the wild baboons by exposing vessels with
strong beer, by which they are made drunk. He has seen some of these animals, which he
kept in confinement, in this state; and he gives a laughable account of their behaviour and
strange grimaces. On the following morning they were very cross and dismal; they held
their aching heads with both hands, and wore a most pitiable expression: when beer or
wine was offered them, they turned away with disgust, but relished the juice of lemons.
(7. Brehm, 'Thierleben,' B. i. 1864, s. 75, 86. On the Ateles, s. 105. For other analogous
statements, see s. 25, 107.) An American monkey, an Ateles, after getting drunk on
brandy, would never touch it again, and thus was wiser than many men. These trifling
facts prove how similar the nerves of taste must be in monkeys and man, and how
similarly their whole nervous system is affected.
Man is infested with internal parasites, sometimes causing fatal effects; and is plagued by
external parasites, all of which belong to the same genera or families as those infesting
other mammals, and in the case of scabies to the same species. (8. Dr. W. Lauder Lindsay,
'Edinburgh Vet. Review,' July 1858, page 13.) Man is subject, like other mammals, birds,
and even insects (9. With respect to insects see Dr. Laycock, "On a General Law of Vital
Periodicity," 'British Association,' 1842. Dr. Macculloch, 'Silliman's North American
Journal of Science,' vol. XVII. page 305, has seen a dog suffering from tertian ague.
Hereafter I shall return to this subject.), to that mysterious law, which causes certain
normal processes, such as gestation, as well as the maturation and duration of various
diseases, to follow lunar periods. His wounds are repaired by the same process of healing;
and the stumps left after the amputation of his limbs, especially during an early
embryonic period, occasionally possess some power of regeneration, as in the lowest
animals. (10. I have given the evidence on this head in my 'Variation of Animals and
Plants under Domestication,' vol. ii. page 15, and more could be added.)
The whole process of that most important function, the reproduction of the species, is

strikingly the same in all mammals, from the first act of courtship by the male (11. Mares
e diversis generibus Quadrumanorum sine dubio dignoscunt feminas humanas a maribus.
Primum, credo, odoratu, postea aspectu. Mr. Youatt, qui diu in Hortis Zoologicis
(Bestiariis) medicus animalium erat, vir in rebus observandis cautus et sagax, hoc mihi
certissime probavit, et curatores ejusdem loci et alii e ministris confirmaverunt. Sir
Andrew Smith et Brehm notabant idem in Cynocephalo. Illustrissimus Cuvier etiam
narrat multa de hac re, qua ut opinor, nihil turpius potest indicari inter omnia hominibus
et Quadrumanis communia. Narrat enim Cynocephalum quendam in furorem incidere
aspectu feminarum aliquarem, sed nequaquam accendi tanto furore ab omnibus. Semper
eligebat juniores, et dignoscebat in turba, et advocabat voce gestuque.), to the birth and
nurturing of the young. Monkeys are born in almost as helpless a condition as our own
infants; and in certain genera the young