CHILD HYGIENE IN HUMAN ECOLOGY 



E. BLANCHE STERLING 



United States Public Health Service 



Probably as late as a decade ago some surprise might have been felt, if not 

 expressed, that a specialist in child hygiene should have been invited to pre- 

 sent a paper at a eugenics congress. Much of our efforts has been called 

 dysgenic. We have been accused of moving heaven and earth to save the 

 unfit, the propagation of whose kind is most undesirable. 



In recent years, however, the eugenicists themselves are telling us there 

 is no real conflict between eugenics and preventive medicine; that eugenics 

 is not concerned with heredity alone, but is concerned with the interaction 

 of heredity and environment; that human ecology must claim a large share 

 in the interest of us all. 



Speaking for the child hygienists, I know of no science that could make 

 our task easier than eugenics. Medicine, surgery, psychology and social 

 service can help us to solve some of our problems, but eugenics would actu- 

 ally wipe out part of them. 



I have no doubt that we do save some that are unfit. I am quite willing 

 to admit that some of the children whose lives are saved in our child hygiene 

 campaigns will grow up to increase the inferior strains in the population. 

 From the published statements of many of you, I am sure you are equally 

 willing to admit that it is quite impracticable to separate the fit from the 

 unfit in any public health program. We cannot limit our diphtheria immun- 

 ization to the children of college professors or refuse to vaccinate the feeble- 

 minded son of the day laborer. 



Last year at the centenary meeting of the British Association for the Ad- 

 vancement of Science, Dr. Sherwood Dawson, a propos of the greater fer- 

 tility of the less intelligent elements of the population, stated that it was 

 possible some of the present day schemes to promote welfare might be doing 

 something to preserve the dull and so accentuate social problems. How- 

 ever, when I was in London last month I saw no evidence that our British 

 friends had begun to restrict their child welfare work to those children hav- 

 ing an intelligence quotient of 125 to 150. The child hygienist has to work 

 with the child population as he finds it. Some features of the differential 

 birth rate make us fearful of what that population may be in the not very 



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