e body a
change, an anomaly pathos. This can become hereditary under some
circumstances, and then become the foundation for certain small
hereditary characters which are propagated in a family; in
themselves they belong to pathology, even although they produce
no injury. For I must remark that pathological does not mean
harmful; it does not indicate disease; disease in Greek is nosos,
and it is nosology that is concerned with disease. The
pathological under some circumstances can be advantageous"
(_Correspondenz-blatt Deutsch Gesellschaft fuer Anthropologie_,
1894). These remarks are of interest when we are attempting to
find the wider bearings of such an anomaly as sexual inversion.

This same distinction has more recently been emphasized by
Professor Aschoff (_Deutsche medizinische Wochenschrift_,
February 3, 1910; of. _British Medical Journal_, April 9, 1910,
p. 892), as against Ribbert and others who would unduly narrow
the conception of pathos. Aschoff points out that, not merely for
the sake of precision and uniformity of terminology but of clear
thinking, it is desirable that we should retain a distinction in
regard to which Galen and the ancient physicians were very
definite. They used pathos as the wider term involving affection
(_affectio_) in general, not necessarily impairment of vital
tissue; when that was involved there was nosos, disease. We have
to recognize the distinction even if we reject the terminology.

A word may be said as to the connection between sexual inversion and
degeneration. In France especially, since the days of Morel, the stigmata
of degeneration are much spoken of. Sexual inversion is frequently
regarded as one of them: i.e., as an episodic syndrome of a hereditary
disease, taking its place beside other psychic stigmata, such as
kleptomania and pyromania. Krafft-Ebing long so regarded inversion; it is
the view of Magnan, one of the earliest investigators of
homosexuality;[239] and it was adopted by Moebius. Strictly speaking, the
invert is degenerate; he has fallen away from the genus. So is a
color-blind person. But Morel's conception of degenerescence has
unfortunately been coarsened and vulgarized.[240] As it now stands, we
gain little or no information by being told that a person is a
"degenerate." It is only, as Naecke constantly argued, when we find a
complexus of well-marked abnormalit