Medical Fads and Fancies 43 
be pessimistic, there is a more depressing view and one 
that will surely demand its solution. We are learning a 
little, though even now perhaps too much, in that there 
is danger of interfering with those great biological laws 
that resulted in our present being through the cruel 
doctrine of the survival of the fittest and the evolution 
of species. I hesitate to develop this subject, yet we 
must voice the truth as we see it, and in the end, there 
will be nothing gained by seeing as through a glass 
darkly. Before we can reach the solution we must appre- 
ciate the cause. Modern medicine in its trend is even 
now tending, and in the future will undoubtedly much 
more tend, to preserve inferior and less resisting types 
of persons to procreate their kind. We take pride in 
- our low infant mortality, but it implies from a purely 
impartial standpoint the saving of less desirable types 
to reproduce themselves. Pretty girls sell tuberculosis 
society tags on the street corners and thus help to save 
many tuberculosis patients, and so do God’s speed, we 
_ say; but dare I ask, what of all the tubercularly suscep- 
tible people that they succeeded in saving who will tend 
to reproduce their kind? It is an unattractive view; 
but let me proceed until we may at least sense a solu- 
tion. We see more and more frail children survive, many 
desperately sick people recover through skill in diag- 
nosis and treatment. We have considerably increased 
longevity, but what of the future? Is it not possible that 
we tend to develop an inferior and less resistant type? 
Ease of living, lack of those hardships that through 
elimination developed primitive people are also factors 
to the same end. Physically the race seems not in deca- 
dence but constantly more athletic. But this may be a 
temporary phase. Anthropologists tell us that there is 
evidence to the contrary. That the little toe and the 
