Infant and young child welfare / by Harold Scurfield.

  • Scurfield, Harold, 1863-1941.
Date:
[1919]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Infant and young child welfare / by Harold Scurfield. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    produce a few supermen, the trend of social evolu¬ tion is to give every child a chance and to raise the average. We might use the simile of a com¬ petition between teams of harriers. We want a good average, and not a team composed of a few brilliant runners and a hopeless tail.” It has for long been the ethical code of Medicine to use all its powers to prolong human life, how¬ ever maimed, and Preventive Medicine must square its efforts with that code. Kidd’s writings have helped us to realise the deadening effect of an exaggerated belief in the doctrine of heredity, and will inspire us to take up with renewed vigour the question of improving the environment. One of the most interesting chapters in “ The Science of Power ” is that on “ Social Heredity,” in which it is shown that many of the character¬ istics of animals which have hitherto been regarded as hereditary habits or instincts are not really due to inborn heredity at all, but are acquired after birth as part of the social inheritance which the adults of the species impose by example and training on the young of each generation. The War has brought us down to the realities of life, and we realise as we never did before that the health and education of the children are the chief things that matter. Failure to care for the young life is not only folly in a nation but an offence against humanity. We want healthy babies born of healthy mothers in healthy homes. After they are born, the parents must have sufficient