RACE SUICIDE

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 91, 7 October 1911, Page 10

RACE SUICIDE

"A LOOSENING OF THE MORAL FIBRE."

•'ln the declining birth-rate and race suicide we se evidence of a loosening of the moral fibre of a community, nurtured in self-indulgence—breaking away from the guiding and restraining influences of religion, and finding no other monitor." This was a sentence from the address delivered by Dr. Pockley as president of the Australian Medical Congress in Sydney. Proceeding to discuss this question, he said: "Leaving the religious, moral, social, economic and patriotic aspect of the question to others, I must confine my remarks to the medical point of view, and even here one is hindered from speaking plainly bv feelings of delicacy and a sense of public decorum. Amongst medical men there is a growing conviction that many of the nervous complaints of the modern woman arises from repression of her natural instincts and physiological processes, and a suspicion that the measures of restriction adopted mm' be a cause of female cancer. "What can medical men do to cheek the evil? We can press the claims of mother before, during and after childbirth. We may point out the risks and probable consequences of attempting to defy Nature. We can resist the frequent importunities to destroy antenatal life. By care of the newborn child we can lessen infant mortality. We can urge on educational bodies the desirability of plain-speaking and instruction on some of the at present tabooed branches of physiology in the schools. We can impress on Governments and our patients the serious consequences of enthetic disease, which in one form results in great infant mortality, or life-long infirmity, or special susceptibility to other diseases: and, in another, is the cause of probably four-fifths of the cases of unpremeditated sterility, and, incidentally, is responsible for most cases of blindness, the greater portion of the work of the gynecologist, and productive of untold domestic misery. These effects the average man or woman utterly fails to realise, or else treats lightly.

"The best hope of remedying the present drift appears to lie in education and in elevation of public sentiment. Repressive legislation would probably be of no more effect than were the stringent measures of the Emperor Augustus. Wise enactments could do good, but unless framed with the greatest care and circumspection, and with assistance from the wisest heads in the medical pro-. fession, (hey could easily do more harm than good: indeed, hav'e already done so.

"When (he figures for the birth-rale are analysed, it is found that the fallingoil' occurs chieflv amongst (he thrifty and provident, the physically, and mentally desirable classes.'not amongst the ihriflless and improvident and degenerate: so thai (he race is rapidly recruiting iself from below.

'•Statistics ujvo (lie birlh-rnte per family of the until, or degenerate, as 7..'!. compared with I..") of a heallhv s!o;k. In three generations 101)11 members of the more desirable classes would he represented by liS7 descemlanls. ■i'-'inw'. :il|.'l!) of the unfit and feeble-minded."