IMPORTANCE OF HEREDITY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23504, 19 May 1938, Page 19

IMPORTANCE OF HEREDITY

Hygiene and heredity were the two main factors described as being ol great importance to national physical fitness bv Sir Farquhar»Buzzard, Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford university, in a recent address. He said: "I have made up my mind that the factors of physical fitness can be divided into two categories. The first of these is called hygiene, in which is classed the whole question of nutrition and diet, the avoidance of oad habits in regard to food and drink, and so on, and the obtaining of real recreation. To the other category I give the general name of heredity. I ha\e the strongest conviction that all the questions lying behind heredity are. in the next 25 years, going to be probably the most important, subject to the nation and even to the world. Modern civilisation is tending more and more to promote the survival and propagation of the unfit, and more and more the discouragement of fertility on the part of the fit. Worst of all. if tnt tendency goes on it is going to mean, with a recurrence of war, that we shall be destroying at intervals all our best breeding stock Heredity is always an unpopular subject, but the time is coming when it will have to bo faced. We should spend money on research and investigation on the problem before it reaches very important dimensions. You cannot possibly alter the character of a race or nation in regard to physical fitness, mental fitness or anything else on a large scale without appreciating and applying whet knowledge we have of the principles of heredity,"