OCR Rendition - approximate

70 EUGENICS so in the face of the massive and conclusive evidence afforded by the natural history of human races in relation to disease is beyond my comprehension. How could a race undergo evolution against, malaria (for example), if parental disease altered and injured the hereditary tendencies of the offspring? How could Natural Selection select if all the variations presented for selection were unfavourable ? The observations on disease and injury published by Brown Sequard, Cossar Ewart, and many medical men, are capable of an interpretation different to that which they have given. Mr. Galton speaks as if the causes which have brought about the disappearance of most savage races when brought in contact with high civilisation were obscure. I can assure him, however, that they have been worked out precisely and statistically by many medical observers on the spot. Apart from extermination by war, the only savage races which are disappearing are those of the New World, and in every instance they are perishing from the enormous mortality caused amongst them by introduced diseases against which their races have undergone no evolution. He will find these precise statistics in the tables of mortality issued by all the Public Health departments that exist in America, Polynesia, and Australasia. He will find also many accounts in the journals of travellers. If he will read the records of visits of parties of aborigines from the New World to the cities of Europe, he will find that their mortality, especially from consumption, was invariably high. There is nothing more mysterious about the disappearance of these races than there is about the disappearance of the dodo and the bison. They are perishing, not because, as Froude poetically puts it, they are like "caged eagles," incapable of domestication, but simply and solely because they are weak against certain diseases. If malaria instead of consumption were prevalent in cities, the English would be incapable of civilisation, whereas the negroes and the wild tribes about the Amazon, and in New Guinea and Borneo, would be particularly capable of it. Indeed, it may be taken as a general rule, to which there is no exception, that every race throughout the World is resistant to every disease precisely in proportion to its past experience of it, and that only those races are capable of civilisation which are resistant to the diseases of dense populations. Before the voyage of Columbus, hardly a zymotic disease, with the exception of malaria, was known in the New World. The inhabitants of the Old World had slowly evolved against the diseases of civilised life under gradually worsening conditions, caused by the gradual increase of population, and therefore of disease. They introduced these maladies to the natives of the New World under the worst conditions then known. They built cities and towns, the natural breeding places of all zymotic diseases, except those of the malarial type. They gave the natives clothes, which are the best vehicles for the transport of microbes. They endeavoured to Christianise and civilise the natives, and so drew them into buildings where they were infected. They forced them to labour on plantations and in mines. In fact, they forced on them every facility for "catching" disease. As a result, they exterminated or almost exterminated them. The natives of the Gilbert Islands lately petitioned our Government not to permit missionaries to settle among them, as they feared destruction. They were perfectly right. Clothes and churches and school-rooms are fatal to such people. The Tasmanians, before they were quite exterminated, had a saying that good people-that is, people who went frequently to church-died young. They also were perfectly right-that is as regards their own race. It is a highly significant fact that, whereas every white man's city in Asia or Africa has its native quarter, no white man's city in the New World has a native quarter. To find the pure aborigines of the New World we must go to parts remote from cities and towns. They cannot accomplish in a few generations an evolution which the natives of the Old World accomplished only after hundreds, perhaps thousands of generations, and at the cost of thousands of millions of lives. The Negroes, who were introduced into America to fill the void created by the disappearing aborigines, have perhaps persisted, but they had already undergone some evolution against consumption-the chief disease of civilisation -and much evolution against measles and other diseases. Yet even the Negroes would not have persisted had they not been introduced under special conditions. They were taken to the warmer parts of America at a time when consumption was little rife as compared to its prevalence in the cities of Europe, and they were employed mainly in agricultural occupations. They had a special start, and were placed under conditions that worsened only slowly. As a result they underwent evolution,, and are now able to persist in America. But African Negroes, as compared to the natives of the densely populated parts of Europe and Asia, have undergone little evolution against consumption. As a consequence, no African colony has ever succeeded in Europe or Asia. For instance, the Dutch and English imported about twelvee thousand negroes into Ceylon a century ago. Within twenty years all except a mere handful had perished, mainly of consumption, and that in a country where the disease is not nearly so prevalent as in Northern Europe, or the more settled parts of Northern Asia. There can be little doubt that the sterility of the New World races when brought into contact with civilisation is due mainly to ill-health. The sterility of our upper classes is mainly voluntary. It is due to the possession of special knowledge. The growing sterility of the lower classes is due to the spread of that knowledge ; hence the general and continuous fall in the birth-rate. Until we are able to estimate the part played by this knowledge it would be vain to collect statistics of comparative sterility. We have frequently been told that no city family can persist for four generations unless fortified by country blood. That I believe is a complete error. Country blood does not strengthen city blood. It weakens it, for country blood has been less thoroughly purged of weak elements. It is true, owing to the large mortality in cities and the great immigration from the country, it is difficult to find a city family which has had no infusion of country blood for four generations. But to suppose on that account that country blood strengthens city blood against the special conditions of city life is to confuse post hoc with propler hoc. ITS DEFINITION, SCOPE AND AIMS 71 CIibPDF - www.fastio.com