NATURAL DEATH, PUBLIC HEALTH 227 



and careful studies, by the most refined of modern meth- 

 ods, upon occupational mortality seem likely to yield 

 large returns. 



PUBLIC HEALTH ACTIVITIES 



Fortunately, it is possible to get some light on the 

 environmental side from existing statistical data by con- 

 sidering, in a broad general way, the results of public 

 health activities. Any public health work, of course, 

 deals, and can deal in the present state of public senti- 

 ment and enlightenment, only with environmentalmatters. 

 Attempts at social control of the germ-plasm — the innate 

 inherited constitutional make-up — of a people, by eugenic 

 legislation, have not been conspicuously successful. And 

 there is a good deal of doubt, having regard to all factors 

 necessarily involved, whether they have always been 

 even well-conceived. As an animal breeder of some 

 years ' experience, I have no doubt whatever that almost 

 any breeder of average intelligence, if given omnipotent 

 control over the activities of human beings, could, in a 

 few generations, breed a race of men on the average con- 

 siderably superior — by our present standards — to any 

 race of men now existing in respect of many qualities or 

 attributes. But, as a practical person, I am equally sure 

 that nothing of the sort is going to be done by legislative 

 action or any similar delegation of powers. Before any 

 sensible person or society is going to entrust the control 

 of its germ-plasm to politics or to science, there will be 

 demanded that science know a great deal more than it 

 now does about the vagaries of germ-plasms and how to 

 control them. Another essential difficulty is one of stan- 

 dards. Suppose it to be granted that our knowledge of 



