Address, “Conservation of the Human Race”
Dr. Hurty—Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen:
High authority says we are only fifty per cent. efficient; that we live out less than one-half the natural duration of life, that we consume twice as much food as is needed to maintain efficient life, that we waste as much as we use, and that one-half of all human beings born either die before reaching maturity or fall into the defective, delinquent or dependent classes. In these facts we find reasons why we waste the major portion of all our resources and call it development. In these facts we find reasons for the existence of robber taxation and predatory business. For, a people who waste themselves, will, of course, waste their natural resources. Therefore, the first, the most important, the fundamental conservation, is the conservation of human efficiency. A people who cannot be brought to a realization of the fact that they lead only half lives, and, who realizing, will not end, will show the nations-to-come what fools the present mortals were.
LENGTH OF LIFE.
Length of life is a resultant of strength. “Honor thy father and thy mother that thy days may be long in the land the Lord thy God giveth thee.” It is an honor and it is a strength, for a nation to have a low sickness and a low death rate with their consequent lengthened average duration of life. In India, the average length of life is twenty-five years, in the United States, forty, in England, forty, in Germany, forty-three and in Sweden, forty-five. The natural duration is one hundred years. Metchnikoff, after thirty years of study of disease and death says, only a very few die natural deaths, most of mankind commit suicide. That is, most people do not know how, or will not, conserve their vitality, and thus results a greater or less period of disability and inefficiency with premature death. Nature does no fooling, she has her laws and they are enforced up to the handle.
VITAL ASSETS.
Comparison of vital and physical assets as measured by earning power, show that the vital are three to five times the physical. The facts show that there is as great room for improvement in our vital resources as in our lands, water, minerals and forests; and furthermore, this improvement must come first for through human life only is natural conservation possible. The dead past may bury the dead, but living and strong men, not the weakly and sickly, must do the work of Conservation.
ILLNESS.
From our vital statistics, which constitutes the bookkeeping of humanity, we learn that fully 100,000 people in Indiana are sick at all times, 25,000 of whom are consumptives. Not less than half of this is preventable, and three-fourths may be prevented by strong effort. Eighteen experts in various diseases as well as vital statisticians, have contributed data on the ratio of preventability of the ninety different causes of death into which mortality may be classified. From this data according to Fisher, it is found that fifteen years at least could be at once added to the average lifetime by practically applying the science of preventing disease. More than half of this additional life would come from the prevention of tuberculosis, typhoid fever and five other diseases, the prevention of which could be accomplished by purer air, purer water and purer milk. Let the business men, who are in the saddle and who run our affairs, thoroughly consider this. They surely know that disease and premature death are drags to business. Fifteen more years of life to each citizen means an enormous increase in the strength and happiness of the people, with consequent betterment to business.
Minor Ailments must be thoroughly considered in any steps toward the conservation of vitality. They are far more common and farther reaching than is generally realized. They are chiefly functional disorders such as of intestinal canal, heart, nerves, liver, kidneys, etc. These disorders are gateways to the more serious disorders. Those who neglect colds, or what seems to be colds, will prepare the tissues of the respiratory tract for pneumonia and consumption.
Benjamin Franklin, wise and practical, successful as merchant, scientist, and statesman, said—“The having of colds is a great drawback. I notice when I have one my efficiency is greatly decreased. Thought, judgment and understanding are clouded. Furthermore, I notice that colds follow excess in eating and drinking and the much breathing of bad air. They are quite unnecessary.” The losses due to mistakes in business and in the general conduct of life on account of minor ailments cannot be estimated except perhaps as time lost. A study of the matter shows that the time lost cannot be less than four days annually to each supposedly well man. Applying this to the wage earners of Indiana, counting one wage earner to each five people, making 500,000 in all, and we have to pocket an annual loss of 2,000,000 days or 5,470 years. In dollars, counting the average wage at $500 per annum, the loss amounts to $2,735,000 annually. This is certainly a prodigious loss to suffer in Indiana because of minor ailments, all of which can practically be avoided by proper public and private hygiene.
Neurasthenia, so common in the United States, is one of the most serious and insidious introductions to grave disorders, which may be due to depraved nutrition, to needless worry, or failure to have adequate recreation.
Patent Medicines. A source of drug habit, ill health, disease, inefficiency and race poisoning, militating against business is the horrible patent medicines. Medicines at their best, given under skilled medical direction are very dangerous things. (Applause.) The drug addicts, made so by a certain kind of practitioners, by self doctoring, and the taking of patent medicines, are numbered by hundreds of thousands. A large proportion of drunkards are started on their way by taking tonics. It is mostly the alcohol in tonics which produce the seeming improvement and which give temporary relief, but which invariably make the last state worse than the first. Alcohol, and all other drugs, are more dangerous than dynamite, and trade in them should be restricted more severely than trade in dynamite. (Applause.) The earth has been ransacked for drugs to cure. Everywhere we see emblazoned advertisements of medicines which the ad says will cure every disease from corns and ingrowing toenail to syphilis and gonorrhea; and yet, sickness and disease grow apace with our civilization. The world has been fine-combed from the equator to the poles for a something with which to bring health and prolong life; and lo, and behold, like the blue bird, these blessings are in every household patiently waiting to be called. At present, we are in the patent-medicine stage of ignorance, from which we must emerge before real conservation of human life and energy can be realized. (Applause.)
SCHOOL HYGIENE.
In conserving vitality, the child must have physical defects removed as far as possible, then he must be brought up amidst healthful surroundings and itself trained in all that conserves health. This great State of Indiana has already taken steps in this direction. The 67th General Assembly ordained that the schoolhouses hereafter built shall be sanitary in all particulars. This means, that waste of money and waste of child strength and happiness, shall cease in this fair State so far as this one matter goes. The same assembly has given permission to school authorities to institute medical inspection of school children that they may be relieved of morbid physical conditions which cause pain, inefficiency, illness and early death. It was a marked forward step to grant this privilege but it was a mistake of the Legislature in favor of loss of vitality not to make this practical care of children compulsory. Physical strength is the fundamental requirement for the making of children into educated and moral citizens. There is now a world-wide movement led by Switzerland and heathen Japan to save children and make them strong. A Japanese physician traveling in this State said—“We have relatively fewer short graves in our cemeteries.” The intelligence and business sense of a community could be accurately measured by determining its relative number of short graves. Youth is the time to serve the Lord. We must train the body in youth as well as the mind or the opportunity to conserve vitality is largely lost. A far better business scheme than securing more factories would be for the business men to turn their attention to the conservation of human vitality. The returns would be immense, failure to score in such an effort is impossible.
Hygiene has been permitted to extinguish cholera and yellow fever, and by the grace of private benefaction it will soon banish hookworm disease which now incapacitates 2,000,000 people in the South. And may God hasten the business men to permit hygiene to banish those twin leprosies, syphilis and gonorrhea, which are important factors in the causation of insanity, crime, and pauperism, and which so fearfully wreck the lives of so many innocent women and children as well as wreck the lives of the guilty. (Applause.) Syphilis and gonorrhea are responsible for the existence of a large proportion of defectives of various kinds which fill our institutions. Let hygiene drive these plagues away, and, Indiana, instead of building another insane hospital, for another million dollars, which she must shortly do, could donate one of the five now existent to educational use of some kind. (Applause.) I strongly advise Indiana to listen to the health cranks if she wishes to save health, time and money.
SAVING VITALITY.
“Strength, Endurance and Fatigue, are the three great elements to be considered in conserving life. The measure of strength is the force a muscle can exert once, the measure of endurance is the number of times it can repeat an exertion. Fatigue is caused by fatigue poisons, which must be removed from the body during rest, principally during sleep.
Anything, therefore, which reduces strength and lessens endurance and prevents removal of fatigue is inimical to vitality conservation.”
SCIENCE OF LIVING.
The science of living begins at the mouth. Barring the taking of drugs, as a man eats and digests his foods so he is. Owing to drug taking and errors in human feeding, disease is latent in man at all times. Only a few escape sickness and pain and die natural deaths. This is not as nature would have it. Josh Billings, recovering from heart trouble caused by the excessive use of tobacco said—“Nature made us all right, we make fools of ourselves.” Other drugs which are of almost universal use and which affect heart, nerves or efficient elimination are coffee, tea, spices, cocaine, morphine, chloral and alcohol. (Applause.) All of these are drugs, and all are poisons, and all more or less disturb the vital functions, reducing vitality and efficiency.
Any departure from unstimulated nutrition works harm. Stimulated nutrition is unnatural, and perforce, is opposed to strength. Immoderate eating—feasting and gluttony—reduce vitality and induce disease with its consequent inefficiency. A very old adage says—“Most men dig their graves with their teeth.” The old time author of this was striving for the conservation of human vitality. Immoderate amounts of nitrogenous foods, exemplified in white of egg and lean meats, cause auto-intoxication. They do this by undergoing putrefaction in the digestive tract, thus making toxins, which in turn being absorbed into the body, cause the following train of ills which results in loss of vitality and efficiency. Some of the auto-intoxication or over-eating ills, are—biliousness, coated tongue, foul breath, clammy hands, clammy feet, dry lusterless hair, putty complexion, dulled hearing, dulled vision, dulled taste, dulled smell, early loss of memory, loss of continuous thought and attention, headaches, vertigo, dyspepsia, loss of strength, rheumatism, insomnia, fugitive pains and aches, hysteria, nervousness, nightmare, irregular heart, shortness of breath, brittle nails, dry harsh skin, cancer and premature old age of the doddering and slobbering kind. (Applause.)
Until we learn and practically apply the science of living we cannot attain over 50 or 60 per cent. efficiency and must continue to live lives of sickness, pain and disease, and die before the natural duration of life has one-half expired; and if this does not hinder and delay the conservation of natural resources nothing will.
“Over-fatigue, is a cause of loss of vitality. The present working day from a physiological standpoint is too long. Over-work better expressed by the term over-fatigue, starts a vicious circle leading to the craving of means for deadening fatigue, thus inducing drug habits and drunkenness.”
“Experiments in reducing the length of the working day show a great improvement in the physical and mental efficiency of laborers and results in an increased output sufficient to pay the difference. However, the great justification of the shorter day is found in the interests of the race and nation, not the employer. Public safety requires, in order to avoid railway collisions and other accidents, the prevention of long hours; lack of sleep and undue fatigue is quite as great as the waste from serious illness. A typical succession of events is, first, fatigue, then “colds,” then tuberculosis, then death. In order to prevent in the beginning this increasing line of destructive agencies, undue fatigue must be prevented.”
HEREDITY.
Vitality largely rests upon inherited qualities. A child born of weak parents, those parents having received their weakness by inheritance, will itself be weak in the same way. Idiots breed idiots. Whatever improvement the child may enjoy, must rest upon its inherited foundation. If a child inherits brown eyes they must stay brown, no amount of cultivation may change their color, but inherited weak sight may be improved to a greater or less degree. Two forces, therefore, control vitality, namely, conditions preceding birth and conditions during life. In other words, the foundations of vitality are wholly inherited, and may be cultivated to the degree the inherited foundations will permit.
A perfectly sound physical and mental inheritance is rare and is the greatest of all assets. The highest development of a nation will begin when the human law conforms to God’s law of development and parenthood is denied to defectives. Prisons and asylums are now sufficiently numerous, as it is evidence of defectiveness of the masses to conduct our affairs so as to necessitate their increase. Indiana now has five great insane asylums, each representing about one million dollars, and there are enough insane in jails, poorhouses and in homes to fill another one. Our population increased 16 per cent. in the last decade and insanity increased 29 per cent. There is a business problem for you.
To go along in the future as in the past, permitting, even fostering the production of the hereditary insane, of the hereditary pauper and criminal, of the hereditary idiot and feeble-minded, and then building great palaces in parks to care for them, will mean we have not the common horse-sense necessary for the proper conduct of our affairs. (Applause.)
HYGIENE.
We must look to hygiene, the science of health, to conserve human vitality. The term includes every necessary force to prevent disease, to increase strength and endurance, and to prevent the production of the unfit.
The ponderous and oppressively costly courts have been grinding for centuries and crime increases. Punishment and fear of punishment restrain evil doing, but does not eradicate the tendency to evil. This and other defects we must, as far as possible breed out of the race, and science can find a valid answer for every objection which obstructionists can raise to this proposition. Fostering insanity, crime, pauperism and imbecility, is not evidence of understanding and of high ability.
The divisions of hygiene are: Federal, State, Municipal, Institutional, School, Domiciliary and Personal.
Hygiene not only makes for greater physical strength and endurance but it makes for greater moral strength. It is the essence of charity, kindliness, patience and truth.
When, through hygiene, defectives, delinquents and dependents are no longer propagated, when simplicity and frugality of living are achieved, voluntary celibacy and voluntary childlessness will become discreditable, and sickness, disease and premature death will disappear before temperance and sanitized homes.
President White—This admirable paper causes me to say to every one here that they cannot afford to go away and not deposit a dollar with the Secretary for the book of the Proceedings of this Congress. The book of these admirable and practical addresses should be in every home, should be in the library. I hope that every one will leave their address, will register, and receive as soon as they are published a copy of the Proceedings. (Applause.)
It was Louis D. Brandeis who said a year or two ago that the railroads of this country could save a million dollars a day with practical economy and with good system. He got that idea from and quoted Mr. Harrington Emerson of New York City, who will now address this audience upon “The Rescue of the Fit.”