. Darwinism, medical progress and eugenics; the Cavendish lecture, 1912, an address to the medical profession. Heredity; Eugenics; Eugenics; Genetics, Medical. 26 THE CAVENDISH LECTURE by the strain of modern life, is fed up and restored, for a time to his family and to paternity. In our institutions we provide for the deaf-mute, the blind, the cripple, and render it relatively easy for the degenerate to mate and leave their like. In the old days, without these medical benefits and without these social provisions the hand of Nature fell heavily on the unfit. Such were num- bered, as they are l
. Darwinism, medical progress and eugenics; the Cavendish lecture, 1912, an address to the medical profession. Heredity; Eugenics; Eugenics; Genetics, Medical. 26 THE CAVENDISH LECTURE by the strain of modern life, is fed up and restored, for a time to his family and to paternity. In our institutions we provide for the deaf-mute, the blind, the cripple, and render it relatively easy for the degenerate to mate and leave their like. In the old days, without these medical benefits and without these social provisions the hand of Nature fell heavily on the unfit. Such were num- bered, as they are largely numbered now, among the unemploy ables; but there were no doctors to enable them to limp through life ; no charities to take their offspring or provide for their own necessities. A petty theft meant the gallows, unemployment General Degeneracy. I I I rn I I I •II. .^Q^3<|4<;^6§7$.^9^.0^«^ ,^ .^ .(^ a6 sO^^.^ Tubercular 1st T Cousins. W Epileptic ' I I CP Hysteria. Squint. W Mentally defective. © Cataract and Hydrocephalus. ® Eccentric. Fig. 15.—Pisenti's case from "Treasury of Human Inheritance," showing multiple degeneracies. meant starvation, feeble-mindedness meant persecution and social expulsion ; insanity meant confinement with no attempt at treat- ment. To the honour of the medical profession, to the credit ot our social instincts, be it said, we have largely stopped all this. We have held out a helping hand to the weak, but at the same time we have to a large extent suspended the automatic action whereby a race progressed mentally and physically. Surely here is an antinomy—a fundamental opposition between medical progress and the science of national eugenics, of race efficiency. Gentlemen, I venture to think -it is an antinomy, and will remain one until the nation at large recognises as a funda-. Please note that these images are extracted from scanned page images that may have been digitally enhanced for readability - colo
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, booksubjectheredit, bookyear1912
