The child, his nature and nurture / by W.B. Drummond.

  • Drummond W. B. (William Blackley), 1868-
Date:
1903
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The child, his nature and nurture / by W.B. Drummond. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    subject which, on account of its importance, must be referred to briefly here. There are many people at the present day who seem afraid lest in trying to make the conditions of life more easy, and to diminish the intensity of the struggle for existence, we are merely providing a burden for the future by permitting the unfit to survive. It is seriously argued that diseases are really beneficial in their operation, by weeding out the unhealthy from among us, and allowing a more vigorous stock to survive. It has even been asserted that all the efforts of temperance reformers only perpetuate the evil of drunken- ness by preventing the elimination of those who are unable to withstand the temptation to drink. Now it is certainly the case that we owe much of our present knowledge of disease, and much of the improvement which has taken place in recent years in the sanitary arrange- ments of our houses and our towns, to efforts to cope with epidemic disease, and there is no more certain evidence that the drainage and water supply require looking to than an out- break of typhoid or other water-borne disease. To this extent we may believe that disease has been beneficial in its operations. But as an eliminating factor in the struggle for existence, such epidemics strike both the just and the unjust, both the weak and the strong. The blow falls, not on indi- viduals who are unfit, but on communities that have failed to take heed in time; and though the weak doubtless suffer most, the weakness of childhood may prove as fatal as weakness of constitution. Salvation for the community is not to be found by waiting for the slow and somewhat problematical appearance of immunity through selection, but by turning from the ways of error. Again, with reference to diseases which attack not com- munities but individuals, who presumably have some inherent weakness of constitution, I believe that even here it is impos- sible for us by any effort towards social righteousness really to find ourselves fighting against nature. The conditions of existence in human society are extremely complex, and no —«.4.„.^ .»i.a> rKanops we mav make in these conditions the