EUGENICS TO SAVE THE WORLD.

Bush Advocate, Volume XXI, Issue 64, 14 September 1908, Page 7

EUGENICS TO SAVE THE WORLD.

"It is not assei-ted that inherent variations in susceptibility to this, disease are not existent. The case would be unique if it were so. -But it is asserted that tho more we learn of the disease the less importance wo attach to this factor, and the more surely do we see that the three syllables constituting the word 'infection' substantially suffice to dispose of all the confident dogmas with which we are too familiar. One is almost tempted to quote a forcible phrase of Mill's, and say that, given this point of view, 'once questioned, they are doomed.' The only method of accurately studying the question of inherited predisposition would bo by comparative study of the resistance of new-born infants as measured by their 'opsonic index' — which may be (very roughly) described as the measure of tho power of the white cells of the blood to eat up tubercle bacilli. One may venture to commend this proposal to the clinical expert^

"The present writer believes that Eugenics is going to save the world; that there is no study of such urgent and practical importance as that of heredity ; that if" we get the right people born, and the wrong people not born, forms of government and such questions will be left even without fools to contest regarding them. Thus he has every bias in favour of emphasising the hereditary factor in tuberculosis. The fact will at least- not discredit tho foreging views."