148 CARNEGIE INSTITUTION OF WASHINGTON. 



apparently linked in inheritance; nervous instability, best recognized as 

 epilepsy in one strain, insanity in another, and feeble-mindedness in a third — 

 such form a promising field if careful, intensive work be available for a sufl5- 

 cient time upon one well-known genealogy." 



DEFECTS IN DRAFTED MEN. 



Most of the time of the Dkector was spent in the Surgeon General's 

 Office, Washington, on work akin to that of the Eugenics Record 

 Office, namely, the distribution of defects found in drafted men and 

 the physical measurements of such men. Four reports were projected 

 and, of these, one is published (June 1919); one is in the hands of the 

 printer; a third is over half done, and material for the fourth, the 

 proportions of soldiers of different races and sizes, is being collected. 



The first of these reports, published in collaboration with Lieut. 

 Col. A. G. Love, is entitled "Physical Examination of the First 

 Million Draft Recruits: Methods and Results," and shows clearly 

 that the varying proportion of defects detected at camps in accepted 

 recruits from various States depends upon sundry causes, in part social^ 

 in part biological. The vast number of weak feet found was one of the 

 features of the report. About one-fifth of all recruits showed weak 

 feet, and this defect was commoner in recruits from the cities than 

 from rural districts. This result indicates that the human foot is 

 poorly adapted to the demands made upon it by modern civilized life. 

 Even recognizing that much of the foot defect is due to wearing fash- 

 ionable foot-gear (so that it is commoner in the Northern than the 

 Southern States), yet the fact that it is common in rural districts, and 

 especially where the population is of tall stature and heavy, indicates 

 that the relatively recent adjustment to plantigrade locomotion of a foot 

 that in the ancestors served for arboreal locomotion is far from meet- 

 ing satisfactorily the requirements of our social organization. Again, 

 hernia, more or less developed, was found in 3.5 per cent of the recruits. 

 Here, again, there is evidence of a widespread, imperfect adaptation 

 of the muscles and fascia of the inguinal region to carry the load and 

 resist the pressures that accompany man's operations in an erect 

 posture. Again, varicose veins and varicocele were found in great 

 numbers, especially among tall recruits, indicating that the walls 

 of veins of the legs and lower trunk are not always perfectly adjusted 

 to the new hydrostatic problems introduced by man's erect position. 

 Probably an important part of the "mental deficiency" is a heritage 

 from neolithic and paleolithic man. 



It is probable that part of these disharmonies between posture and 

 size, on the one hand, and ability of parts to meet demands made on 

 them is due to the hybridization between short and tall races that 

 has been going on in this country, by which developmental tendencies 

 adapted to small races have come to be associated with tendency to 

 development of great size of body. 



