228 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLIII. No. 1103 



11. Four out of every ten deaths (all causes) 

 are preventable. 



12. Two billion dollars is the estimated annual 

 economic waste due to preventable sickness and 

 preventable deaths in the United States. 



13. The birth rate is steadily declining — espe- 

 cially among the well-to-do classes — and at least 

 200,000 babies die every year from preventable 

 disease. 



14. There are 9,000,000 unmarried women and 

 S,000,000 unmarried men in the United States. 



15. The divorce rate is increasing. In Chicago 

 one suit is filed for every six marriage licenses 

 issued. 



16. Not less than 75 per cent, of school chil- 

 dren need attention for physical defects or im- 

 pairments prejudicial to health. 



17. The large number of mental defectives and 

 backward children in our schools presents a seri- 

 ous educational problem. 



18. Idiocy and insanity are apparently increas- 

 ing. 



19. An enormous number of people are suffering 

 from drug habits and alcoholism. The use of cig- 

 arettes has doubled within the past five years. 



20. Medical men claim that victims of venereal 

 disease are rapidly increasing. 



21. Suicides continue to increase and have now 

 reached the enormous total of over 15,000 an- 

 nually. In ten years, 42,000 people have taken 

 their lives in 100 cities. 



22. America's murder rate is extraordinary. 

 About 80 per million as against 7 to 20 for other 

 nations. But a small number are punished for 

 their crimes. 



The adverse influence of this great body 

 of physical and mental defectives upon the 

 material, intellectual and moral advance of 

 the nation, and upon the quality of present 

 and future citizenship is self-evident. 



We have made wonderful progress in 

 fighting germ diseases, but no war is waged 

 against organic diseases. 



If the government may teach people 

 sanitation — public hygiene — why not in- 

 dividual hygiene — the care of the body and 

 its organs? 



If it is a good thing to teach children to 

 avoid illiteracy, why not how to avoid ill 

 health ? 



If it pays to medically examine our sol- 



diers periodically, why not teach the peo- 

 ple to adopt the same health- and life-sav- 

 ing practise? 



If we can afford to investigate the con- 

 dition of swine and cattle, and of rivers 

 and harbors for purposes of improvement, 

 surely congress can afford to provide this 

 National Vitality Commission to improve 

 human efficiency and to save human life. 



The primary duty of organized society is 

 to guard the health and lives of those who 

 compose it. 



E. E. ElTTENHOUSE 



Life Extension Institute 



THE REVISION OF EOANTHROPUS 

 DAWSONI 



The prehistoric archeologist sometimes un- 

 covers strange bedfellows; no other discovery 

 is quite so remarkable in this respect as the 

 assemblage from the now famous gravel pit at 

 Piltdown Common, Sussex, England. Nature 

 has set many a trap for the scientist; but here 

 at Piltdown she outdid herself in the con- 

 catenation of pitfalls left behind. Parts of a 

 human skull, half of an ape-like lower jaw, a 

 canine tooth also ape-like, flints of a pre- 

 Chellean type, fossil animal remains, some 

 referable to the Pliocene, others evidently 

 Pleistocene; all at least as old as the gravel 

 bed, some of the elements apparently derived 

 from a still older deposit. 



Has not this dazzling combination blinded 

 the discoverers and indirectly some of their 

 colleagues even at a distance, because of the 

 high pitch of expectancy to which recent dis- 

 coveries in the prehistoric field have, not with- 

 out reason, contributed? Under the circum- 

 stances, such blindness if only temporary 

 would be pardonable and comparatively harm- 

 less; but serious danger lurks in the possibil- 

 ity of its persisting long enough to become an 

 obsession and a hindrance to future progress 

 in this particular field. 



All the cranial fragments, including the 

 nasal bones, are human and belong evidently 

 to the same individual. They were however 

 so incomplete as to leave room for a difference 



