332 THE PRINCIPLES OF HEREDITY 



tion. Dr. Eicholz, one of H.M. Inspectors of Schools, with Dr. W. 

 Leslie Mackenzie drew " a clear distinction between physical degeneracy 

 on the one hand and inherited retrogressive deterioration on the other." 

 Dr. Eicholz stated: 



"With regard to physical degeneracy the children frequenting the 

 poorer schools of London and the large towns betray a most serious 

 condition of affairs calling for ameliorative and arrestive measures. . . . 

 Nevertheless even in the poorer districts there exist schools of a type 

 above the lowest, which show a marked upward and improving tendency, 

 physically and educationally though the rate of improvement would 

 be capable of considerable acceleration under suitable measures. In the 

 better districts of the towns there exist public elementary schools 

 frequented by children, not merely equal, but often superior in physique 

 and attainments to rural children. And these schools seem at least as 

 numerous as schools of the lowest type. While there are unfortunately 

 very abundant signs of physical defect traceable to neglect, poverty, and 

 ignorance, it is not possible to obtain satisfactory or conclusive evidence 

 of hereditary physical deterioration that is to say, deterioration of a 

 gradual retrogressive permanent nature, affecting one generation more 

 acutely than the previous. There is little, if anything, in fact to justify 

 the conclusion that neglect, poverty, and parental ignorance, serious as 

 their results are, possess any marked hereditary effect, or that heredity 

 plays any significant part in establishing the physical degeneration of 

 the poorer population. In every case of alleged progressive hereditary 

 deterioration among the children frequenting an elementary school it is 

 found that the neighbourhood has suffered by the migration of the 

 better artisan class, or by the influx of worse population from elsewhere. 

 Other than the well-known specifically hereditary diseases which affect 

 poor and well-to-do alike, there appears to be very little real evidence 

 on the pre-natal side to account for the widespread physical degeneracy 

 among the poorer population. There is accordingly every reason to 

 anticipate rapid amelioration of physique as soon as improvement occurs 

 in external conditions, particularly as regards food, clothing, overcrowd- 

 ing, cleanliness, drunkenness, and the spread of common practical 

 knowledge of home management. In fact, all evidence points to active 

 rapid improvement, bodily and mental, in the worst districts so soon as 

 they are exposed to better circumstances, even the weaker children 

 recovering at a later age from the evil effects of infant life." 



Professor Cunningham apparently took a middle position. He stated : 

 " In spite of the marked variations which are seen in the physique of 

 the different classes of the people of Great Britain, anthropologists 

 believe, with good reason, that there is a mean physical standard, 

 which is the inheritance of the people as a whole, and that no matter 

 how far certain sections of the people may deviate from this by deter- 

 ioration (produced by the causes referred to) the tendency of the race as 

 a whole will always be to maintain the inherited mean. In other words, 

 these inferior bodily characters, which are the result of poverty (and not 

 vice such as syphilis and alcoholism) and which are therefore acquired 

 during the life-time of the individual, are transmissible from one genera- 

 tion to another. To restore, therefore, the classes in which this inferiority 

 exists to the mean standard of national physique, all that is required is 

 to improve the conditions of living, and in one or two generations all 

 the ground that has been lost will be recovered." Professor Cunningham 

 did not explain why he supposed that alcohol and syphilis altered the 

 hereditary tendencies of the germ-plasm, whereas insufficient food and 



