164 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



cording to their religious belief, and, as a matter of history, 

 sudden changes in religious belief have resulted in almost 

 equally sudden variations in intellectual outlook. Similar argu- 

 ments preclude or minimise the connection between mental 

 capacity or incapacity and climate, geography, soil, situation, 

 etc. Into the reasons connecting religion and a national 

 psychosis we need not here enter. The point is that this 

 method, which is a perfectly logical one, lends itself readily 

 to the investigation of the etiology of disease, since, by taking 

 account only of large masses of men, it avoids pitfalls due to 

 local peculiarities, and at the same time its inductions, based 

 like those of anthropology on data supplied by the whole 

 world, are not liable to refutation by facts drawn from distant 

 countries, as, for example, the English physiological standards 

 by experience amongst the Chinese. A few authors have, it 

 is true, done some excellent pioneer work in the field of geo- 

 graphical pathology ; but their investigations, which relate 

 chiefly to zymotic diseases, lack much in exactness and in 

 necessary elaboration of detail, nor do the data collected permit 

 of discrimination between the dietary, clothing, houses and 

 manner of life of the races concerned. 



As a concrete instance of the suggested method let us take 

 the case of appendicitis. Certain medical men point out that 

 this disease, relatively common in countries such as England 

 and the United States, with a high consumption of meat per 

 capita, is rare, if not quite unknown, amongst wheat- and 

 rice-eating populations, such as the Hindoos and the Chinese, 

 or those, such as the inhabitants of the Balkan States and 

 Brittany, where a minimum of meat is eaten. From this and 

 other facts they argue that a carnivorous diet or at least one 

 rich in purins is an indispensable concomitant of appendicitis. 

 We are not here concerned with the truth or falsehood of 

 this theory, which at any rate, so far as it based on an 

 induction from racial dietaries, is still quite incomplete. But 

 the inquiry proceeds on right lines and, if pushed, should 

 permit of a definite and trustworthy conclusion. 



After all the goal of medical science is the maintenance of 

 a high standard of health, not merely in youth but in later 

 years ; the prolongation of human life, active and vigorous, 

 into years now abandoned to senility and ineptitude. It is 

 idle to apply the epithet of healthy to people who, however 



