EUGENICS AND EUTHENICS 



493 



To one who cannot see beyond the immediate consequences of an 

 action, such figures as the above indeed give quite a different idea of 

 the effects of an infant mortaUty campaign, than that which we have 

 just tried to create. And it is a great misfortune that euthenics so 

 often fails to look beyond the immediate effect, fails to see what 

 may happen next year, or lo years from now, or in the next generation. 



We admit that it is possible to keep a lot of children alive who 

 would otherwise have died in the first few months of life. It is being 

 done, as the New York figures, and pages of others that could be 

 cited, prove. The ultimate result is twofold: 



1. Some of those who are doomed by heredity to a selective death, 

 but are kept alive through the first year, die in the second or third or 

 fourth year. They must die sooner or later; they have not inherited 

 sufficient resistance to survive more than a limited time. If they are 

 by a great effort carried through the first year, it is only to die in the 

 next. This is a statement which we have nowhere observed in the 

 propaganda of the infant mortality movement; and it is perhaps a 

 disconcerting one. It can only be proved by refined statistical 

 methods, but several independent determinations by the English 

 biometricians leave no doubt as to the fact. This work of Karl 

 Pearson, E. C. Snow, and Ethel M. Elderton, was cited in our chapter 

 on natural selection; the reader will recall how they showed that 

 nature is weeding out the weaklings, and in proportion to the strin- 

 gency with which she weeds them out at the start, there are fewer 

 weaklings left to die in succeeding years. 



To put the facts in the form of a truism, part of the children born 

 in any district in a given year are doomed by heredity to an early 

 death; and if they die in one year they will not be alive to die in the 

 succeeding year, and vice versa. Of course there are in addition 

 infant deaths which are not selective and which if prevented would 

 leave the infant with as good chance as any to live. 



In the light of these researches, we are forced to conclude that 

 baby-saving campaigns accomplish less than is thought; that the 

 supposed gain is to some extent temporary and illusory. 



2. There is still another consequence. If the gain is by great 

 exertions made more than temporary; if the baby who would other- 

 wise have died in the first months is brought to adult hfe and repro- 

 duction, it means in many cases the dissemination of another strain 

 of weak heredity, which natural selection would have cut off ruthlessly 



