98 A. STRADinSTG ANNITERSAEY ADDEESS : 



demonstration ; but perhaps no more conclusive proof of the increase 

 of pressure could be given than the fact that it is not so very long 

 ago that watches were made with the hour hand only ; old writings 

 do not speak of minutes — there was no 9.47 train to catch then, or 

 anything of that sort — they allude comfortably to noon, midnight, 

 and so on as a rule. Minor divisions of time, in relation to daily 

 life, are sequent upon the requirements of this terrible civilization. 

 And look at the awful results to the race which spring from the 

 education that it entails. Look at our children, cramped in body 

 and mind through the best yeai's of their existence — what a 

 lamentable contrast is theirs to the grand young savages brought 

 up in the school of Nature ! Children — there are no children 

 nowadays ; the young playful human animal is a thing of the past ; 

 they are like the kangaroos which have been kept in captivity 

 generation after generation — they are beginning to walk, not hop 

 or jump — the saddest spectacle to my mind which civilization 

 affords. Eead what our learned and valued member, Dr. Shelly, 

 said on this head in his lecture to the National Health Society last 

 week. There is no need to multiply instances ; the demand for 

 rational dress shows that the pinch on vit;ility is making itself felt, 

 and there is no clearer evidence of our decay than the constant and 

 increasing quest of peptomised and other foods which shall lighten 

 the labour of digestion. The very existence of a medical profession 

 shows that there must be something wrong — a race of undeteriorated 

 animals would not want doctors. And that leads me to remark 

 that doctors are after all the greatest and chiefest enemies of the 

 human race. It is not too much to say that nine -tenths of 

 the effort of medical science is directed towards the extinction 

 of the race, by preservation of the unfit. It is a law of nature 

 that, under ordinary conditions, not one per cent, of the animals 

 of any species born shall survive — not one in a thousand, not one 

 in ten thousand of some species. Mysterious as it seems, Nature 

 is always taking repressive measures to keep the pot from boiling 

 over, to neutralize the exuberance of vitality ; if it were not so, 

 the world would not support any single species for a single year. 

 Man in a state of nature offers no exception to this rule, and even 

 under civilization it is said that two-thirds of the race perish in 

 infancy ; but this is not enough for its conservation. Now, medical 

 science, and especially sanitary science, prevents that beneficial 

 waste of immature and weakly life in explicit defiance of this 

 law; and in using the word "beneficial" I of course adopt the 

 seeming paradox — no paradox at all, however — that that which 

 is beneficial to the individual is commonly, though not necessarily 



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