FUTURE OF THE RACE.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 7025, 13 January 1910, Page 3

FUTURE OF THE RACE.

PHYSICAL CHANGES IN MAN’S EVOLUTION. The doctrine of the survival of the fittest, in its application to the organs of the human body, prompted some highly interesting speculations in the course of Dr. J. A. Lindsay’s '‘Bradshaw Lecture” delivered before the Royal College of Physicians, and reported in the ‘‘British Medical Journal.” The lecturer suggested that ."wisdom teeth” aro a "ruined industry," amd—sensational though the thought appears—it seems probable that, tho sense of smell, no longer of much practical importance to civilised man, and hence removed from the action, of natural selection, is- becoming rudimentary. Tho many feet of the human intestine, it bus been suggested,, are simply "survivals from a herbivorous progenitor, and of no. service to a mixed feeder like man.” The lecturer added the alarming statement that some authorities advocated snipping off a ‘ few feet from our tedious :mtestine. Like the. Breeches of many politicians, it is rambling, involved, and a' long time coming to tho point: it should be cut down. Tho hunAin jaw, (Dr. Lindsay, thinks), is getting smaller and smaller; which explains why the teeth are often so crowded together, that the removal of some of them is a necessity in early life. Our iocs (once so handy—if tho word may be allowed in cuch a connection — when wo swung on the branches of the primeval forest; are also undergoing elimination, with the exception of the great toe, ‘‘which is of service in nAdntaining the upright posture.-" '‘That civilisation runs counter to natural selection,” Dr. Lindsay thinks is evident: and instances our marriage customs—the not uncommon conjunction of Mouth and beauty with age. and wealth, for example. ±le even questions whether the medical profession is free from serious responsibility '‘when it preserves those wnom nature lAts plainly marked out for elimination.” On the other hand it is admitted that "the puny, sickly or deformed child, which, in a state of nature, would be promptly eliminated, may possess the brain of a great discoverer, poet, or statesman,” and mankind is more dependent for its progress upon brains such *as those than upon the muscles of many cricketers, footballers, or oarsmen. j In spit© of the increasing dverago ‘ duration of- human life, the abatement I of some of the . worst scourges of the human race (tuberculosis, typhoid fever ' malaria), and the'declining sick rate of* our benefit 1 societies, physical degener- ■ ation is (Dr. Lindsay believes) going on ! in our midst: *and tho moral he deduces* as the profound influence of evolution on I the race, and i he importance to'modi-•' can© of keeping in view the great dis-1 covenes of Darwin. . ( i