i2o8 LIFE : OUTLINES OF GENERAL BIOLOGY 



ing properly, and progress has stopped. But it is one of the triumphs 

 of modern medicine that the child can be released from the spell if 

 it is treated with thyroid material from sheep or calf. Similarly, 

 there is the insulin treatment of diabetes and, on another line, 

 the serum-treatment of diphtheria. Ankylostomiasis, Bilharziasis, 

 Cretinism, Diabetes — so we might continue down the alphabet of 

 medical triumphs, not to speak of problems now worked at with 

 increasing chance for hope. But we shall mention only one 

 other great advance, that the British child born this year has 

 a life-expectancy twelve years more than that of a child born a 

 hundred years ago; and almost the whole of this improvement — 

 unfortunately not at present continuing at the same rate of rise — 

 was effected in little more than a generation. Our point is simply 

 that when biological and medical science turns with all its strength 

 beyond the advancing victories over disease to the attainment of 

 positive health, we may reasonably expect fresh and insurgent 

 progress. 



At present, however, the biologist cannot but be impressed with 

 the painful contrast, as regards health, between our so far civilised 

 society and Wild Nature with which man has not interfered. In 

 civilised society disease is rife — environmental, functional, microbic, 

 and constitutional — meaning by disease any deteriorative and more 

 or less disintegrative disturbance of vital processes. How depressing 

 our modem city life, as is plainly shown by our need for "change of 

 air", and our benefit from holidays. But in Wild Nature disease is 

 all but imknown. Apparent exceptions to this statement leap to the 

 mind — grouse disease, salmon disease, potato disease, larch disease, 

 and so on; but most if not all of these apparent exceptions appear 

 to be associated with man's interference. By over-sheltering, over- 

 exposure, over-crowding, contamination, or some other interfer- 

 ence, man alters the natural regime which normally makes for health. 

 In Wild Nature pathological variations tend to be nipped in the bud ; 

 there is speedy and persistent elimination of the ineffective ; health- 

 fulness is demanded in the struggle for existence. But in civilised 

 society there is endless compromise with the abnormal. Man's 

 ambitions and desires are often so strong that health becomes a 

 secondary consideration ; social sentiment being strong, there is neces- 

 sarily much cobbling and coddling, kind in the present, often cruel 

 to the future; civilised man has a dulled health-conscience and 

 weak resting "instincts". Just as an ant society may shelter indivi- 

 duals who cannot forage for themselves, nor even eat the food that 

 is brought to them, so human society shelters undesirable individuals 

 who would be speedily eliminated in non-social conditions. It is 

 not so much the shelter of undesirables that one deplores — costly as 

 it is; what is alarming is the permission, or even encouragement, to 

 multiply. 



