PRESERVATION OF TUBERCULOUS CHILDREN 349 



politan Asylums Board. . . . There was great need of a home 

 where these children could be received and given the benefit of 

 open-air treatment. The French believed very strongly in the 

 treatment of children in the pretuberculous stage, and we might 

 with great advantage take a lesson from one of their latest 

 developments, initiated by Dr. Grancher, which consisted in 

 the removal of children from houses infected by tuberculous 

 parents until more satisfactory conditions coidd be established." ^ 

 It is not quite easy to understand what Sir William Broadbent 

 means, in the case before us, by the " pretuberculous stage," 

 seeing that a few minutes before he has spoken of " children 

 suffering from pulmonary tuberculosis " and children certified 

 as phthisical ; and phthisis is certainly not a pretuberculous 

 stage. But even those children who are in the pretuberculous 

 condition, children born of tuberculous parents, are all of them 

 weaklings, degenerates, in the full sense of the word, and their 

 reproduction is not beneficial to the race. 



It will be said, of course, as was said of Herbert Spencer, 

 that we desire a return to the state of afiairs which pre- 

 vailed among the Spartans of old, and that, according to us, 

 sickly, weak, and diseased ofispring should be eliminated by 

 law. Such an objection, however, would be based on a mis- 

 conception. Far be it from us to desire to stop the flow of that 

 " milk of human charity " which has done so much to alleviate 

 pain and suffering, to bring a ray of sunlight to the outcast, to 

 hghten the burden of many a human heart. But, above all 

 things, we must not forget our essential solidarity with the 

 generations which are to come ; we must not forget our heavy 

 responsibilities towards our descendants ; and we must not forget 

 that, whenever we sow the wind, those who come after will 

 reap the whirlwind. As we have already mentioned Nietzsche, 

 we will quote that admirable philosopher in support of this 

 view : " We are now in a position," wrote Nietzsche, " to under- 

 1 The Times, December 1, 1905. 



