May 1 6, 1918] 



N%Tatl& 



205 



OF HUMAN 



k STUDY IN CONDITIONS 



NURTURE.^ 

 'T^HE Carnegie United Kingdom Trust did the 

 ■^ nation a good turn when it secured reports 

 on the existing provision for promoting the 

 physical welfare of mothers and young children 

 in" England and Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. 

 The third volume, now before us, is by Dr. Leslie 

 Mackenzie, and deals with Scotland. It is a very 

 important human document, compiled with con- 

 spicuous scientific insight and unusual literary skill. 

 It is not only well-planned, lucid, teUing — it rises 

 on appropriate occasions to a high level of art. We 

 do not mean that there are purple passages, but 

 something much subtler — ^that the author, in deal- 

 ing with the intricacies of the human web of life 

 and the often tragic clash of the human struggle 

 for existence, has at strategic points attained to 

 an impressive cadence and solemn dignity of dic- 

 tion which appeal to us as congruent with the 

 urgency and seriousness of the problems discussed. 

 That artist and man of feeling should persist 

 in a busy administrator is wonder 

 enough, but our admiration grows as 

 we realise the firm scientific 

 grip and the fresh insight which 

 the half-hundred chapters disclose. 

 We should like to illustrate this by 

 various examples. 



(i) Dr. Mackenzie has shrewdly 

 recognised the fundamental impor- 

 tance of the geographical factor. 

 This note is struck in the two vivid 

 maps — showing contours and dis- 

 tribution of population — which 

 meet us at the threshold of the 

 report, and it resounds through 

 and through. The midland 



valley of Scotland contains one- 

 fifth of the area, but about three- 

 quarters of the population, A 

 massive urbanisation, still very im- 

 perfectly integrated, has entailed 

 a pressure of life which is 

 hard on mothers and their children. The High- 

 lands and islands, including more than half the 

 area of Scotland, have only about one-tenth of 

 the population, but the mitigation of the pressure 

 of life is counterbalanced by the distances which 

 often make the utilisation of medical and other 

 welfare services difficult, and by such complica- 

 tions as the exceptional disproportion between 

 local production of commodities and local demand, 

 which explains the well-known seasonal exodus 

 and other striking features. 



(2) Following the Le Play method of regional 

 survey, the author has obtained from numerous 

 experts, as well as from his personal observations, 

 a series of pictures of representative areas, such 

 as a Highland parish, a mining village, an island 

 in the Hebrides, an East Coast fishing village, a 

 south-eastern agricultural area, a group of indus- 



'^ "Scottish Mothers and Children: Being a Report on the Physical 

 Welfare of Mothers and Children." Vol. iii., " Scotland." By Dr. W. Leslie 

 Mackenzie. Pp. xxviii + 632; with 2 maps, 6 charts, and many illustrations. 

 <East Port, Dunfermline : The Carnef{ie United Kingdom Trust, i9»7.) 



trial villages, and so on. These special regional 

 studies are of great value, and some of the general 

 results, such as the apparent rarity of venereal 

 diseases in the Highlands and island's, and fishing 

 villages generally, have much biological as well 

 as medical interest. 



(3) The author's biological discipline has led 

 him to attach much importance to intimate con- 

 tact with his subject-matter — composed not of 

 statistical units, but of flesh-and-blood, struggling 

 organisms, his brothers and sisters, and children. 

 This insight of sympathy, beyond scientific 

 analysis and yet its needed complement, has led 

 him to understand the people of Lewis and the 

 like better than they understand themselves. 



(4) In diagrammatic illustration of the author's 

 mood and method we may refer to the so-called 

 "black houses " of Lewis, still to be numbered in 

 hundreds, if not in thousands (Figs, i and 2). They 

 are without chimneys ; the peat fire is kept burning 

 day and night, and is, in spite of the smoke, the 

 saviour of the household ; the straw roof does not 



NO. 2533, VOL. lOl] 



no chimney, no window. 



keep out the rain, and thus almost necessitates 

 "box-beds "; there is often more than propinquity 

 of the cows and their manure. The " black houses ' ' 

 are, of course, deplorable and deteriorative ; but 

 that is not their scientific description. The fact 

 is that, in point after point, these "black houses " 

 are like organisms built up under difficult con- 

 ditions, meagrely perhaps, but with remarkable 

 adaptiveness. The stones are from the moor; 

 timber is from the sea ; lime mortar is expensive ; 

 the roof must be moulted every year, and therefore 

 the walls must be low ; moreover, the gales are 

 high. "At every point the house is adapted to its 

 fundamental purposes," and what the doctrinaire 

 student or the careless visitor dismisses as un- 

 worthy of savages, the product of laziness or per- 

 versity, turns out to be "a product of long labour 

 and sacrifice," "a fundamental part of the only 

 system of agriculture formerly found possible in 

 this island of gneiss rock, clay, and peat moss." 

 "It is part of the price that a people of 



.n:' 



