NATURE AND NURTURE

Taranaki Daily News, 11 February 1928, Page 6

NATURE AND NURTURE

KNOWLEDGE NOT APPLIED. (Contributed by the Department of Health.) . Sir George Newman, Chief Medical Officer of the Board of Education, England and Wales, writes in his latest annual report: "No one can read these records of disease and sickness in childhood and realise their profound importance to us all, to the whole nation, without asking himself why it all happens. We know that the two universal factors at work in man’s life, for better or worse, are Nature, the basic constitution of man, and Nurture, his upbringing. We can see that Mis survival on the earth is due to both of them. We can also see that his nature is the predominant factor. It is constant. The factor of his nurture is inconstant and variable. When we come to analyse nurture we discover that it consists partly of his total environment—climate housing, clothing, food, occupation, wages—and partly of his training in the application of these things and what knowledge .he possesses and the use to which he puts it. As we look over the world and consider man’s nature, we see it is biologically the same, in the one species in all races. His nurture is largely the same too. All men have to acclimatise themselves to the aretic, temperate, or tropical zone in which they live, they have to provide themselves with shelter, clothing, and food. There is one great outstanding difference between men—knowledge. Some meh know how to live, others do not; some men know how to behave in varying circumstances, others do not; some men find truth and strive to live by it, others do not; "Ignorance,” it has been well said, “is the great human curse.” We have all often pondered upon this situation. There is a grand secret hidden somewhre for man’s discovery. There is a foundation or key of knowledge somewhere, a sort of common denominator, consisting partly of traditional experience, handed down through, thousands of years, partly of science, partly of religion. It seems that man cannot really “emerge” to use Browning’s word in Paracelus, unless all three have their place in his nurture. He is so constructed of body, mind, and spirit that he eannot live at the top of his human capacity unless this harmony be attained. In so far as it is reached he has health, wholeness, oneness, the best of which his particular body is capable. This is the vision splendid, the goal which draws men onwards. But there are lions in the path, and all too often they either frustrate the desired plan or divert the chosen path. It is not an official duty to deal with these lions, with one exception. This is disease, the disease or disharmony arising from untoward physical conditions, the leaetion of the body to the influence of unfavourable agents or infections. Not only is this reaction disabling to the body (making the person invalid), but both in origin and in effect‘its province is very wide, almost illimitable. For the origin of this reaction, this disease and its results, may, and generally do, concern the whole nature of man—his body, mind, and spirit, his comprehensive social being. SOLVENT OF PROBLEM' ■‘There is but one solvent of this probleb, viz., more knowledge,” says the same authority. “We must assume that even our deepest learning has more ignorance than knowledge. Even medical science at its highest' has but few established and incontestable verities; ic is still inevitably empirical and experimental in a large degree; we live in a golden age of Medicine, yet its darkness obscures its light.” But wo are getting on, and one thing is quite certain—and it is this point I desire to make clear beyond all manner of doubtand with all the emphasis which I can command we know for certainty a great deal more than we are willing to use and apply. We must be plain and explicit. We know that food is more important than raiment, yet many poor bodies foolishly clothe themselves with fine apparel, though they know that food is better than silk stockings; we know that conditions of fresh air and exercise, of warmth and cleanliness are necessary to health, but we do not practise them; we know how to prevent leprosy, cholera, plague, typhoid, typhus and septic diseases, and where we have been able to apply our knowledge they have disappeared, but we have not yet done it throughout the British Empire; we know the causes of tuberculosis and rickets and venereal disease, and. we know how to prevent all three of them, yet these three human scourges are still widely tolerated; above all else we know how to save infant life, and build up sturdy boys and girls, and stronger men and women, and we have done it where we have chosen to do it, but all too often we do not choose. Why is it that infant mortality is lowest of all in doctors’ families? Why is it that some schools have a clean bill of health and beautiful children, and other schools have not? Why is it that half-a-million children in our elementary schools are dull and backward, and a half million others need medical advice before they can gain reasonable benefit from the education which the State provides? These are not idle questions, nor are they mine. They are being asked by the people themselves. They are formidable and grounded on very stern and fully proved facts. No doubt there are many factors at work, but there is one general answer, which with all possible reservations remains broadly true. “The people perish for lack of knowledge.”