348 MEDICAL SECTION 



traits and structural peculiarities from one generation 

 to another contain no matters for thought and research 

 more immediately important or more practically useful 

 than do ante-natal hygiene and the nine momentous 

 months which precede birth. I am glad when I hear 

 of men and women, gifted with all the qualities which 

 make research into life-problems both valuable to 

 others and ennobling to themselves, throwing them- 

 selves with abandonment into the study of eugenics ; 

 but I often wish they would for a while suspend theii 

 efforts to reach the far-off eugenic goal and concen- 

 trate them on the hygiene of the nine months of 

 pregnancy. I know well that it is said and believec 

 that by the time an infant has reached the womb oi 

 its mother, its fate, eugenic or dysgenic, is fixed and 

 irrevocable ; but I know also that even the most 

 hereditary of maladies may be ameliorated after birth, 

 and there is reason in supposing that they may b< 

 much more ameliorated during the nine months befon 

 birth when the new organism is so plastic and alter- 

 able. But even if it be proved it has not yet beei 

 proved that the conditions of life in the nine months 

 before birth have no influence either for good or ill 

 upon hereditary maladies and deformities (using th< 

 word heredity in its strict sense, and not in the 

 loose one of " any thing which a child is born with "), 

 even then there remains much to be done in ante- 

 natal hygiene, for there cannot be the slightest doul 

 that many morbid influences come to play upon th< 

 body of the infant in the womb and that some at least 

 of them may be prevented or their results cured. 



The Destruction of Ante-natal Health, by Syphilis, 



Take that subject about which at the present tim< 

 there is the most pressing need for frank speakinj 

 and full recognition ; I mean venereal disease, as il 

 is called, although it is better to concentrate one's 

 thoughts specially on syphilis. It is painful to have 



