HEREDITARY DISEASES. Their Relation to Race Culture Briefly Stated.

Te Aroha News, Volume IV, Issue 184, 25 December 1886, Page 8

HEREDITARY DISEASES. Their Relation to Race Culture Briefly Stated.

The " Popular Science Monthly " says : A fallacious notion has somehow crept in that an intellectual man must bo below par physically, and that the one- faculty is necessarily cultivated at the expßneo of the other. The old proverb^ jueut, bana in loipori btino, has been flouted aa on absurdity. So much, very briefly, for the first cauae of race degeneration ; the second, and the one to which this paper would direct alteration, is tho influence of hereditary dieoaees. This factor has never received the attention ifc should have hud at the band of writers on social science. The races of which ue hnvo been speaking had little of thid element to contend with. The woaklings were either deliberately exposed and left to die, a? in the ca^e of the Hpartane, or if they attained maturity they were held in such low eateena that they willingly kopt m the background. Look for a moment at our modern civilisation and mark its diametrically opponite tendency. Every day hospitals are being erected to nurture the diseased and imperfect specimens of our race, and every year thousands of children are by skill aud care saved from the death to which nature would consign them. All this accords with our enlarged notiona of humanity, and reflects i^reat credit on the ?eal of the philanthropist and the science of the physician, but it oxevts a baneful effect on the race. To ono v. ho has had nccesa to any largo city hospital it ia a painful sight to see the multitude ot children who are tided over a few years and sent out into the world branded with a hereditary taint, to propagate their wretched breeds. The limit of this paper will not allow any extended statistics, nor the nature of it warrant a special discussion, of hereditary d.soases?, but there are two whose effects Are apparent to all -consumption and insanity. The former, consumption, rising the term in its widest sonse, has for years produced the most frightful ravages. For example, in England, from IS:>7 to IS4I, of the total number of deaths from all causes, sixteen per cent, were from consumption. In Philadelphia, from 1840 to 1549, the death rate was one of consumption to aix and onehalf from all other causes, or about fifteen per cent.