An attempt to correct some of the misstatements made by Sir Victor Horsley ... and Mary D. Sturge, M.D. in the criticisms of the Galton laboratory memoir: A first study of the influence of parental alcoholism, &c / by Karl Pearson, F.R.S.

  • Pearson, Karl, 1857-1936.
Date:
1911
Catalogue details

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

Credit: An attempt to correct some of the misstatements made by Sir Victor Horsley ... and Mary D. Sturge, M.D. in the criticisms of the Galton laboratory memoir: A first study of the influence of parental alcoholism, &c / by Karl Pearson, F.R.S. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    12/48 (page 10)
    IO A REPLY TO CRITICISMS OF THÉ who are healthier ought not to die more' is pure dogma until we have considered whether the two sets of children have been submitted to the same degree of stress in the environment. We actually used the greater degree of stress in the environment to account for the higher death-rate accompanied by equal, if not greater health among the surviving children of the alcoholic. Now Sir Victor Horsley and Miss Sturge {B.M.J,, p. 76) write as follows : ' In their reprinted'^ memoir they take up this [V. H.'s] objection . . . and say .that there is no a priori basis for saying that healthier surviving'' children ought not to die more than less healthy children. To support this they have inserted the word surviving . . . ' Now what can any reader derive from such a sentence? Only that the word 'surviving' was inserted by us after reading Sir Victor's criticisms ! Yet here are the actual words of the first edition of our paper : ' Further the higher death-rate of the children of alcoholic parents probably leaves the fitter to survive' (p. 31). The text of the memoir has not been altered ; the only addition is a footnote to the word 'survive', saying that we see no reason why a higher death-rate among children of the alcoholic parents is incompatible with better health in their surviving children. Naturally we could only measure the health in the surviving children of school age, and it is these survivors who are of the first importance from the eugenic standpoint. There was no insertion whatever in our second edition of the survival notion; it was clearly stated for all to read in the first edition. Now the fact I want to emphasize is this : that Sir Victor 1 Italics are mine.