356 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



portance that we should accurately distinguish between these environ- 

 mental influences that are temporary in their effects and modify the 

 individual or existing generation, and those that are permanent, and, 

 as it were, sink in and modify the race. 



It was in connection with the former of these that the contemptuous 

 treatment of heredity at Leicester, to which I have alluded, took place. 

 Dr. William Hall, who has done so much to stir up an active interest 

 in the feeding of school children, impressed by the prompt and striking 

 results he had witnessed by beneficially influencing their food environ- 

 ment, threw discredit on heredity, and not only so, but argued that 

 there is really only one important element in environment, and that is 

 food. He went so far as to say that food altered the whole condition 

 of the individual, and that the children in the slums of our great cities, 

 properly fed, could be reared superior in physique to children reared in 

 better class districts, which, from his own point of view, proved rather 

 too much, for if the slum children when well fed are superior to the 

 better class children, presumably equally well fed, then they must have 

 inherited more vigorous constitutions, or the better class children must be 

 retarded in their development by conditions other than food. Amongst 

 the Jewish children in Leeds, examined by Dr. Hall, who were so much 

 stronger and less rickety than the Gentile children living in the same 

 district, careful feeding may have been, and probably was, the principal 

 factor in their better health and vigor, but there were other factors 

 which should not be ignored. Eacial characteristics must count for 

 something. Dr. Hall says that the poor Jew is more self-reliant, tem- 

 perate, and has a greater power of resisting infectious disease than the 

 poor Gentile. Does he suggest that these traits must also be attributed 

 to feeding? Then the Mosaic law bears on personal hygiene through 

 other channels than that of diet. The Tenth Ward in New York, the 

 population of which consists almost entirely of Russian and Polish 

 Jews, is the most densely populated in the city, both as regards the 

 number of inhabitants to the acre and of tenants to the house, and not- 

 withstanding this the Tenth Ward has the extremely low death rate, 

 for New York, of 17.14, and is surpassed in healthfulness only by two 

 wards out of the twenty-four of the city — one a business, and the other 

 a suburban district. Now this favorable death-rate and general salu- 

 brity of the Tenth Ward are not the result of superior economic condi- 

 tions, or better feeding, for the people are of the very poorest class, but 

 must be credited to cleanliness and that careful observance of domestic 

 sanitation in all its branches, enjoined by Hebraic rule and custom. 



No one will underrate the importance of the part played by food in 

 physical development, or the sinister effects of a deficiency of it, espe- 

 cially when growth is going on, in the production of degeneration ; but, 

 as Dr. Dawson Williams pointed out, it is going far to say that the 



