DARWINISM, MEDICAL PROGRESS, AND EUGENICS 

 THE CAVENDISH LECTURE, 1912.i 



An Address to /he Medical Profession. 

 By Professor Karl Pearson. F.R.S. 



Mr. President, Gentlemen, — I confess to strangely mixed 

 feelings in venturing as a layman to stand up and address you — a 

 professional audience — to-night. When I look through the long 

 list of names borne by those who have, during more than a 

 quarter of a century, given the Cavendish Lecture, I lind all that 

 is best in English Medical Science represented, and more than 

 one foreign authority of world-wide repute. "S^our lecturers have 

 been men known not only within the medical profession, but men 

 who have won the confidence of a wide lay public by the extent 

 and efficiency of their labours for general social welfare. It must 

 appear presumption on my part to stand on this platform and break 

 — if it be only for a single occasion — that flow of wide medical 

 and surgical experience which has been placed before you 

 annually for more than twenty-five years. It seems to me that I 

 have before me the very serious task of justifying not only my 

 acceptance of this post, but also your Council's invitation to a 

 layman, who is not only a layman — i. e. a man without medical 

 training — but is held by more than one distinguished leader in 

 your profession to criticise without knowledge more than one 

 accepted medical truth. 



I am quite clear, however, that the suggestion conveyed by your 

 Council's invitation and my own inclinations would lead me on 

 this occasion to give a wide berth to these controversies. I feel 



' This lecture was delivered to the West London JMedico-Chirurgical 

 Society as the Cavendish Lecture for 191 2, and originally published in 



the West London Medical Journal, vol. xvii, pp. 165-193, 1912. 



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