The Dominion. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 1913. THE FIGHT FOR LIFE.

Dominion, Volume 7, Issue 1867, 29 September 1913, Page 6

The Dominion. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 1913. THE FIGHT FOR LIFE.

Health is wealth in the truest and best sense of the word, both for the individual and for the nation. It is necessary to emphasise this fact at times, because the word "wealth" has been corrupted, so that its original meaning—a state of weal or well-being—has become obsolete, and it is now generally used to signify merely the possession of money and property. There are, however, signs that civilised peoples ' are getting back to the older and nobler use of tho term, and are beginning to realise once more that public health is the greatest element in the public wealth. Every year tho function of the physician as a servant of tho State is growing in importance, and statesmen are coming to realise that all other reforms are of little value unless the permanence and physical fitness of the race are first secured. Every civilised nation has its Department of Public Health, a form of State activity which has been continually expanding of recent years, and will probably grow at a still faster rate in tho future. The annual report of the Chief Health Officer of New Zealand, which was presented to ; Parliament on Friday, illustrates this point in a. striking _ way. A mere glanoe at tho headings shows what a wide field is already being covered, and no one can set limits to possible developments as time goes on. There is the birth-rate for a start and tho care of young children, and when they get a, little older the doctor meets them again in the school. Then there are protective measures, such as regulations to seoure the purity of the food of tho people, vaccination, quarantine, and sanitary precautions; also the fight against special forms of disease, Native medical _ hospitals, and charitable aid, and so on, touching life at various critical points between the cradle _ and the grave. The doctors are doing magnificent work for the community, and yet they are in a measure fighting against civilisation itself, for many of the conditions of modern life are producing some of tho very ills they are striving to cure. This was pointed out by Dr. C. W. Eliot, president of. the Congress on School Hygiene, held in the United States in August last. He stated that the civilisation of the last hundred years has worked terribly against the health and perpetuity of the race. This, he said, is seenin the reduced vitality of tho multitudes that inhabit ' closely-built cities, in the diminishing size of in the incapacity of many women to, bear and nurse children, and "in the disproportionate increase in the number of the insane, the defective, and the criminally inclined. A little over a hundred years ago an English country clergyman named Halthus startled the world by an essay in which he depicted the coming miseries of humanity arising out of the tendency of population to increase faster than the means of subsistence. But the world has ceased to worry about Malthus and his predictions. It is the diminishing natural increase of the people in most civilised countries that is now causing anxiety. Take the case of New Zealand, for instance. The Health Beport tells us that the birthrate per thousand of tho population in 1912 was only 26.48 for every 1000 persons living. This is far too small, but owing to our wonderfully low death-rate _ tho rate _of natural incroaso in this Dominion stands highest among the principal countries of tho world, tho figures for 1908-12 being 17.32 per 1000. Australia (1908-12) comes next with 16.43, the rates for some of the other countries being Denmark (1907-11), 14.18; German Empire (1906-10), 14.12; England and Wales (1906-10), 11.56; Scotland (1900-10), 11.42; Japan (1905-9), 11.04; Ireland (1906-10), 0.12; and France (1907-11), 0.40. The following table, giving the rates por fhousand of births, deaths, and natural increaso in New Zealand over a period of years, shows the trend in a very striking manner: —

Natural Birtlis. Deaths. Increase. 1871-75 39.88 .12.87 27.21 1881-85 56.36 10.95 25.41 1891-95 27.CS 10.15 17.53 1901-05 26.G0 9.91 16.69 1911 25.97 9.39 16.58 1012 26.-18 8.87 17.61 If the death-rate had remained the same as in the 1871-75 period the natural increase per 1000 for 1912 would have been only 13.81 instead of 17.61. Tho afcoEttly dooran.EC in the death-

rate disclosed by tho above figures is very largely due to the progress of medical science, tho extension of the sphero of the doctor in the public service, and tho greater attention being paid in various other ways to the public health. In this unceasing fight for life the doctors and statesmen are faced witb some very difficult problems arising out of the conditions of modern life. The falling birth-rate is not the only trouble. We are also faced with the unpleasant fact that the decline is more pronounced among the best stocks than among those less fit from the mental and physical points of view._ The very sucocss of the doctors in reducing the infantile deathrate, combined with certain phases of modern humanitarianism, has blunted the edgo of Nature's pruning knifo which tondfid to eliminate the unfit, and no effective substitute has yet been found. We do not know enough to warrant any drastic steps in this direction, though something more ought and could be done to prevent hopeless defectives from reproducing their like. Professor Bateson,_ one of the greatest living authorities on this question, referring in a recent address to the increase of lunacy in England, said thore was a disposition' to lay tho blame on conditions of life, the severity of the modern struggle, the greater or less consumption of alcohol or other drugs, and so forth; but, he added, those who had somo knowledge of genetic physiology were aware that the whole force of modern science and legislation had hitherto been exercised in the preservation of defective strains in our midst, and would not feel serious hesitation as to the true cause of increase. Professor Baxeson is, however, keenly aware of t]ie limitations of human knowledge as regards this problem of heredity, and he struck a wholesome not© of warning against "any wholesale tampering with the structure of population such as would follow if any marriage _ not regarded by officials as eugenic were liable to prohibition." He went on to say that nothing yet ascertained by genetic science justified such a. course, and we might well wonder how genius and tho arts would fare in a community constructed according to the ideas cf such legislators. There was, he thought, a danger that in ridding the community of mania we would leave it gravely affected with dullness. The solution of this and many other similar problems still appears to bo a long way off, yet the medical profession may well' be proud of its achievements in recent years.