RACIAL IMPROVEMENT

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 123, 20 November 1926, Page 20

RACIAL IMPROVEMENT

EUGENICS AND SOCIAL CONDITIONS. A few months ago Major Leonard Darwin published a. book in.'which he suggested that much of the physical, mental, and moral weakness at present impoverishing society could only bp "bred out" of the race. He advocated the spread of knowledge of the importance of sound breeding, and making of family restriction a condition of Stale relief, and the sterilisation of certain types of mental and physical unfttness. Professor Leonard Hill, F. 8.5., in the September number of the "English Review," takes up the age-old discussion of the claims of heredity as against environment, and in an article entitled "Eugenic Reform versus Preventive Medicine" maintains • that many of the defects which Major Darwin thinks can be cured only by breeding can be dealt with by preventive medicine. Professor Hill says:—"The eugenist ha 3 studied statistically the effect of the use', or non-use, of the tooth-brush on the decay .of school

dence of the utility of the brush, wishes to breed a stock resistive to caries. But the student of preventive medicine recognises that the wild animal and the wild man and the domestic animals do not use tooth brushes, and scarcely suffer at all from decay." More ultraviolet rays in city atmosphere, and more fruit and green food, less refinement of bread and cereals, less sugar, more exercise, is the answer of preventive medicine to the dental problem. The cretinous children of goitrous parents may be eliminated by preventing goitre, w.hieh can bo done by ensuring the presence of a minute quantity of iodine in the yearly diet.

"The eugeuist from a statistical inquiry concludes that cases of pulmonary tuberculosis treated in sanatoria, live no longer than those treated at home," says Professor Hill, "and looking on such State-aided curative methods as a vain waste of money and effort, seeks to limit the breeding of the tuberculous. The medical expert's answer is that most people go into sanatoria too late, and do not keep discipline. Children in sanatoria do very well, and babies removed from tuberculous parents, or even living under open-air conditions in a > tuberculous colony with their parents, grow up per-