Science and Physical Development 



Inter-Departmental Committee on Physical De- 

 terioration. This Committee was appointed in 

 September 1903, and reported in July 1904. The 

 original plan was that the Committee should make 

 a preliminary inquiry to be followed up by a 

 Royal Commission, but this scheme was sub- 

 sequently abandoned, and the Committee was 

 ordered to complete the inquiry itself. 



Its starting-point was a memorandum, prepared 

 by Sir William Taylor, the Director-General of 

 the Army Medical Service, in which the Inspector- 

 General for Recruiting is quoted as saying that 

 "the one subject which causes anxiety in the 

 future as regards recruiting is the gradual deterio- 

 ration of the physique of the working classes from 

 whom the bulk of the recruits must always be 

 drawn/' a statement which is illustrated, but not 

 proved, by extracts from the Army recruiting 

 statistics. A good deal of correspondence followed 

 between the War Office, the Committee, and the 

 Royal Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons. The 

 conclusion seems to be that, in face of a declining 

 general death-rate and with an almost total ab- 

 sence of other evidence, it is impossible to speak 

 of " progressive physical deterioration " in the 

 nation as a whole, and Sir William Taylor is 

 perhaps right in regretting "that the words 

 1 physical deterioration ' have been adopted in the 

 designation ... of the Committee." "To my 

 mind," he adds, "the principal question ... is 

 to inquire into the causes and present extent of 

 the physical unfitness that undoubtedly exists in 



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