PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 22 November 1926, Page 5

PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY.

“PRES* THE BUTTON ’ VUE. DEAN INGE DISCUSSES MODETENDENCIES. f CABLE—PRESS ASSOCIATION—COPYRIGHT. LONDON, Nov. 20. Dean Inge described the present as the “press the button’’ age, before the Royal College of Physicians. He .said that every physical change at present in progress in our bodies appeared to be degenerative. The teeti decreased both in size and strength, and the jaws were becoming too small to hold teeth. Eyesight had deteriorated .baldness in middle age was increasing deplorably and something seemed wrong with the appendix “The -day may come/' he said when we shall be unable to walk or write, for we u.se the motor-car ior the' first and the typewriter for the second, ft is a. ‘you press the button and we dt. the rest’ sort of business, and Nature is most likely to say : ‘All right, 111 leave you just sufficient intelligence to press the button.’ ’ . Few middle-aged people could read closely written or printed matter without classes, continued the Dean, while ancient Greeks were able to live into extreme old age without mechanical assistance. , , . Dean Inge doubted whether human intelligence had advanced in the last thousand years. Russia was literallj decapitated, -and when they recovered civilisation in that country they would have to go to Germany for arts and sciences. , . , Another world-wide happening such as the war would end civilisation, and probably be the beginning of a dark ace lasting for a century. Unquestionably many problems were due to the “press the button ’ business, “for undoubtedly the whale lost its hind legs by living in the waiter. - The decline in stature of the race was too great to be attributed to malnutrition in wartime. . . , The speaker ivais of opinion that the pressing problems of to-day were not those in Which politicians were interested. but the great medical societies would do' much if they spoke out. W hatever men thought about their souls, tliev had «a great regard for their bodies and consequently great respect for doctors.