The First International Eugenics Congress / by Edgar Schuster.

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

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The First International Eugenics Congress / by Edgar Schuster. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    many racial elements making up a population, the migration to the towns of the best portions of the rural communities, and the rapidly falling death rate. In this connection the conten¬ tion brought forward by Professor Kellogg may also be referred to, namely, that great wars exercise a selective action tending to diminish the stature and deteriorate the physique of the nations engaged. To throw clear light on these problems, a vast quantity of reliable data is required, and to obtain this Dr. Hansen insists on the necessity of methodical anthropometric surveys, estab¬ lished and conducted by Governments. (b) History. Dr. Woods1 in his paper, “ Some Inter-relations between Eugenics and Historical Research,’5 attempts to meet one of the commonest objections which is urged against Eugenics, namely, that there is no proof that mental characters are inherited. People who hold this view are quite ready to admit that among the near relations of men eminent or successful in some particular walk of life may be found an unusually high proportion of other persons distinguished above the average, but they assert, with some reason, that this may be due to environmental causes, to opportunities arising from family influence, to the stimulus of example, to encouragement, to wealth, and to many other factors of a somewhat similar nature. Dr. Woods answers, if environ¬ ment is so all powerful in moulding the mental pattern, why are such strong contrasts shown between persons reared in more or less similar environments? These contrasts must be due to inborn qualities. For example : “ There is no reasonable cause why Frederick the Great was so different from his weak-kneed and almost forgotten ancestor, George William of Brandenburg, except inborn determiners—something in the protoplasm, or, shall we say, something in the chromosomes.” History shows also that the greatest differences have been shown by reigning sovereigns in their moral natures as well as in their mental powers, and as little in the one case as in the other can a satis- 1 Some Inter-relations between Eugenics and Historical Research. By F. A. Woods, Harvard Medical School.