Eugenics / by Edgar Schuster.

  • Schuster, Edgar.
Date:
[1912]
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Eugenics / by Edgar Schuster. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    20 EUGENICS referred to and for the time dismissed, and this shows how closely bound together the whole subject is, and how impossible it is to subdivide it in a really logical manner. A consideration of differences in birth¬ rate leads on to the discussion of their causes. How far are they due to differences in natural fertility? How far to other factors? No less effectively than the birth-rate the death-rate may be selective on its action. For instance, it is urged by some that the mortality which is always heavy among infants may actually tend to improve the physique of the race by removing those who are on the whole weaker than the survivors. If this is the case, it is an instance of a selec¬ tive death-rate acting on the whole in a Eugenic manner. Other authorities point out that as the components of an army at the time of a great war are on the whole superior in physique to those who follow occupations at home, the death-rate of a large proportion of them, taken more or less at random, on the battle-field or in the camp, will have selective action of an exactly opposite kind, in that the better will be taken and the worse be left. The death-rate from particular diseases may be selective primarily in its tendency to remove those persons most liable to it, but secondarily if any special mental or physical quality is associated with the tendency.