176 
president’s ADDRESS — SECTION I. 
Thus man, like other organisms, is started upon the way of life 
with all his possibilities conditioned by inherited molecular poten- 
tialities, and science would shut its eyes to omnipotent law if it did 
not recognise the fundamental influence of appropriate marriage upon 
the health of the offspring. Yet, how frequently, from want of 
recognition of this sanitary axiom, is the start in life made with the 
momentum towards disease rather than towards health. Let three 
illustrations suffice to show how far-reaching the results. Take, for 
example, those whose cells can scarcely stand up against the wear and 
tear of existence, much less withstand stress and strain. Such inherited 
vulnerability is responsible more than anything else for premature 
decay, and for the onset of a host of diseases, prominent amongst 
which comes that which kills at least one-sixth of the civilised world — 
tubercular disease. Or take, again, the large class of the rheumaticky, 
the gouty, the dyspeptic, and the nervous. In a large proportion 
the sufferers have to thank their ancestors for their disease ten- 
dencies, and the fact that in many, such as the nervous, the 
law continues to ignore this inherited factor, is extra reason 
why science should continue to draw clamorous attention to 
the falsity of the legal position. In subtler guise, too, this 
inherited defect lies at the root of those numerous peculiarities, 
physical, mental, and moral, which characterise individuals of ill- 
balanced temperament. Hence it is that the neurotic almost of 
necessity live a life of unreasoning impulses, unnecessary anxieties, 
and bodily discomforts, whilst the hepatic are ever subject to numerous 
congestions and system- wide irritability; and it is only with the 
spread of scientific knowledge that a juster judgment of such cases 
becomes possible, and prevention is attempted where cure is impos- 
sible. But enough has been said to indicate how an incalculable 
amount of disease would be averted, and a corresponding amount of 
health secured, if only inheritance could be scientifically regulated. 
How far we are from such attempt must be patent to all. Here, at 
the end of the nineteenth century, we still take less pains to breed 
men than to breed any other domestic animal. What we require is 
not the poor thing called State legislation, but the wider diffusion of 
knowledge, and the direction of “ marriage by natural selection” into 
more satisfactory channels, by closer attention to those underlying 
factors— opportunity and propinquity. 
Inheritance, however, does not explain all life, much less all 
health; both are also questions of development and environment. 
It is, of course, a commonplace to remind anyone how largely health 
depends, for example, upon such everyday matters as food and drink, 
exercise, recreation, and rest, and attention to the different functions ; 
and yet it is the commonplaces that are all-powerful. And how wide- 
spread do we find ignorance and neglect upon these very points, and how 
disastrous the results that follow therefrom! Take, for example, the 
great question of food. According to Sir William Boberts, one genera- 
tion of scientific dietetics would produce an influence upon humanity 
second only to a new creation of the race ; and yet through improper 
feeding there are more deaths amongst infants than occur during all 
the years that follow. Again, science places a certain limit to the amount 
of meat suited to the requirements of the adult; and yet Australians 
continue to eat three or four times this quantity, with the result that 
