The Daily News. TUESDAY, AUGUST 20. AN APPEAL TO REASON.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume L, Issue 60, 20 August 1907, Page 2

The Daily News. TUESDAY, AUGUST 20. AN APPEAL TO REASON.

The inspector-dencral of Hospitals (Dr. Hay), in his report presented to Parliament, deals with the question of i hereditary insanity. "When we axult over the fact that only 088 of th» native-born are insane," he says, "and that this means a proportion of only one insane person in (il3.ti, let us r«niiiiubor that we should have had ouly one or two (giving a liberal allowance), and the proportion would have been from one in -JOOO to one in 0000, if we had been sulliciently Utopian to have eliminated the factor of heredity in the past. Needless to add that such would have been impossible. I do not sugg >st drastic measures, because the matter must be left largely to the public conscience. One is not sanguine enou-.'h to believe that .in the selection of a lifepartner as much care will be exercised as in tin" selection of stock, which, of courne, can be done dispassionately; but surely it is the duly of interested persons to ascertain facts of personal and family history such as have to be disclosed before a life-insurance company will accept a risk of even a luin-

dred pounds. If it profit a trading company to pay a medical foe to keep itself safe for so small a risk, surely it would pay to do something to avoid the great risk of persons marrying in

ignorance, when enlightenment may encourage the union of healthy men and women. If public opinion were to see

in this a mailer for the action of the Mate, so much the better for llir> State. The value of an individual naturally loads to tho next point to be considered —mffncTyfilio lic-jilth of the mother and child. Apart from inducing bodilv disl orders not. directly associated with :nBiflitv. apart from nviilal cnfceildement due to arrested brain development, apart Troni fne fact that children comparatively seldom labor under mental disease, it miv reasonably be presumed that the proper nourishment of the infant both before and after birth must I ell when moral and physical

stress is encountered later in life and when tuxiieniie sttes have to he combated— esjior-inllv if these he also a new ropathetic inheritance tn contend wi;h From this standnoint alone, the work that Dr. Kin? has initiated in /he South for Ihe protection of the health of women and children is of great importance, lie is demonstrating to the mother that she is assisting the Almighty miracle, the ultimate success of which depends on the- manner in which she regnMes her life, and that, once the child is horn, she must not. for 'ts lasting good and for her own good, deprive it of i!s birthright the nourishment that was ordained for its use. The rapid development of the brain in the three months before birth and the three yeirs-after, when relatively it 5s out of all proportion to the bodyweight, surely mark these out as crit:-, cal periods with regard to ultimate! mental stability. As to the growing: child and school, one is pleased to note the modern tendeney to pny some heed to the lessons of physiology: and to trust that a happy augurT"rnay be divined in the Education and the' various , medical departments . fieing - under the sime Minister. It is ftjie that the law of averages which rules vital statistics cannot be altered appreciably by the laws of Parliament, but when an analysis of our statistics demonstrates that we have two averages—a high avenge of insanity among our immigrants and a low avenge among our own people—it is right to point this out lest \hc averages be mingled in ignorance. We all know that, the presumably responsible will continue to commit exccsies, and that nature will continue to ihe revenged, tint to warn persons gravitftt- ' ing towards pauperism, crime, and snsnnity against putting an enemy 'n I their mouths to steal away their brains jis to cry in the wilderness: but some leffortI effort is ncccssiry to prevent their sins being visited to the third and fourth generations."