OCR Rendition - approximate

66 EUGENICS community, rural and urban, a hygienic renascence is in progress ; second, that in the many forms it assumes it has no explicit basis in scientific theory. In attempting, some time ago, to penetrate to the root-idea of the public health movement, I concluded that, rightly or wrongly, we have all taken for granted certain postulates. The hygienic renascence is the objective side of a movement whose ethical basis is the set effort after a richer, cleaner, intenser life in a highly organised society. The postulates of hygienics-whose administrative form constitutes the public health service-are such as these : that society or the social group is essentially organic ; that the social organism, being as yet but little integrated, is capable of rapid and easy modification-that is, of variations secured by selection; that disease is a name for certain mal-adaptations of the social organism or of its organic units; that diseases are thus, in greater or lesser degrees, preventable; that the prevention of diseases promotes social evolution; that, by the organisation of 'representative agencies-county councils, town councils, district councils, parish councils and the like-the processes of natural selection may be indefinitely aided by artificial selections; that thus, by continuous modification of the social organism, of its organic units and of the compound environment of both, it is possible to further the production of better citizens-more energetic, more alert, more versatile, more individuated. Provisionally, public health may be defined as the systematic application of scientific ideas to the extirpation of dis eases, and thereby to the direct or indirect establishment of beneficial variations both in the social organism and in its organic units. In more concrete form, it is an organised effort of the collective social energy to heighten the physiological normal of civilised living. A science of hygienics might thus be regarded as almost equivalent to the science of eugenics ; character is presupposed in both. The fundamental assumption of hygienics is that the human organism is capable of greater things than on the average it has anywhere shown, and that its potentialities can be elicited by the systematic improvement of the environment. From the practical side, hygienics aims at "preparing a place" for the highest average of faculty to develop in. Take Heredity-one of Dr. Galton's points. The modern movement for the extirpation of tubercular phthisis began with the definite proof that the disease is due to a bacillus. But the movement did not become world-wide until the belief in the heredity of tuberculosis had been sapped. So long as the tubercular person was weighted by the superstition that tubercular parents must necessarily produce tubercular children, and that the parents of tubercular children must themselves have been tubercular, he had little motive to seek for cure, the fatalism being here supported by the alleged inheritance of disease. Now that he knows how to resist the invasion of a germ, he is proceeding in his multitudes to fortify himself. What is true of tuberculosis is true of many other infections. Consequently, every hygienist will agree with Dr. Galton that the dissemination of a true theory of heredity is of the first practical importance. Nor is the evil of a wrong theory of heredity confined to infectious disease. If the official "nomenclature of diseases" be carefully scrutinised, it will be found that the vast majority of diseases are due either to the attacks of infective or parasitic organisms or to the functional stress of environment, which for this purpose is better named "nurture." Thishas recently been borne in upon me by the examination of school children. The conclusion inevitably arising out of the facts is that inherited capacities are in every class of society so masked by the effects of nurture, good or bad, that we have as yet no means of determining, in any individual case, how much is due to inheritance and how much to nurture. There is here an unlimited field for detailed study. Next, Fertility. It is, I suppose, on the whole, true that the less opulent classes are more fertile than the more opulent. But I am not prepared to accept the assumption that the economically "upper classes" coincide with the biologically "upper classes." May it not rather be that the relatively infertile "upper classes " (economical) are only the biological limit of the " lower classes," from which the "upper" are continually recruited? Until the economically "lower classes" are analysed in such detail as will enable us to eliminate what is due to bad environment, we cannot come to final conclusions on the relative fertility or infertility of "upper" and "lower." Until such an analysis is made, we cannot well assume that the difference in fertility is in any degree due to fundamental biological differences or modifications. Dr. Noel Paton has recently shown that starved mothers produce starved offspring and that well-fed mothers produce well-fed offspring. In his particular experiment with guinea-pigs, the numbers of offspring were unaffected. If this experiment should be verified on the large scale, it would form some ground for doubting whether the mere increase of comfort directly produces biological infertility. The capacity to repro duce may remain ; but reproduction may be limited by a different ethic. The universal fall in the birth-rate has been too rapid to justify simpliciler the conclusion that biological capacity has altered. When the public health organisations have succeeded in extirpating the grosser evils of environment, they will, it is hoped, proceed to deal more intimately with the individual. In the present movement for the medical examination and supervision of school children, we have an indication of great developments. If to the relatively coarse methods of practical hygienics we could now add the precision of anthropometry, we should find ready to hand in the schools an unlimited quantity of raw material. We might even hope to add some pages to the "golden book" of "thriving families." Incidentally, one might suggest a minor inquiry. Of the large thriving families, do the older or the middle or the younger members show, on the average, the greater ultimate capacity for civic life ? My impression is that, in our present social conditions, the middle children are likely to show the highest percentage of total capacity. This is a mere impression, but it is worth putting to the test of facts. To the worker in the fighting line, as the public health officer must always regard himself, Dr. Galton's suggestions come with inspiration and light. ITS DEFINITION, SCOPE AND AIMS 67 CIibPDF - www.fastio.com