2 THK CAVENDISH LECTUKK 



sure that it is ralher the office I hold than my personal opinions 

 which explain that invitation and my presence here to-night. I 

 ask myself: What is the bond between the Director of the 

 Francis Galton Laboratory for National Eugenics and the 

 medical profession ? How far have we common ends, and 

 how far do we follow the same path towards increased social 

 welfare ? 



The founder of our laboratory, Sir Francis Galton, was 

 descended on one side from a stock which was clinical by 

 instinct, and produced a number of medical men of distinction. 

 Erasmus Darwin and Robert Darwin are still honoured names in 

 medicine. Sir Francis Darwin, being on a pleasure journey in 

 the East, settled down in charge of a plague hospital that he 

 might understand the nature of plague. His nephew and 

 godson, Francis Galton — then a medical student of the Birming- 

 ham General Hospital — found his chief disappointment in visiting 

 Smyrna that the plague was over, and that he could not study it 

 at first hand. He spent nearly four years in medical studies, partly 

 before and partly after his mathematical work at Cambridge, and 

 when independence came to him on the death of his father, he 

 tells us : " 1 abandoned all thought of becoming a physician, but 

 felt most grateful for the enlarged insight into Nature that I had 

 acquired through medical experiences" ("Memories," p. 82). 



Sir F'rancis Galton was, like his grandfather, by instinct a 

 clinician, and that instinct, together with his four years' medical 

 study, influenced both his lines of research and all he wrote. Within 

 a few months of his death he approved the scheme we had 

 drafted for the University Commissioners, by which the first 

 application of any new funds accruing to the laboratory should 

 be the provision of a permanent medical officer. I mention these 

 matters because, from our founder downwards, we have always 

 sought co-operation with the medical profession, and 1 venture 

 to think — as a study of our publications will indicate — that that 

 co-operation has been as generously given as it was frankly 

 sought. 



Examine with me for a moment the definition of my science : 

 " National eugenics is the study of those agencies under social con- 

 trol, which may improve or impair the racial qualities of future gene- 

 rations, either physically or mentally." How can you expect to do 

 anything in a science such as that without the hearty co-operation 

 of the medical profession? Hereditary deformities and diseases, 



