Personal Hygiene.—In the first place, good health is the one greatest asset in life. We may be born with a poor bodily machine, but if we learn to recognize its defects and care for it properly, we may make it do its required work effectively. If certain muscles are poorly developed, then by proper exercise we may make them stronger. If our eyes have some defect, we can have it remedied by wearing glasses. If certain drugs or alcohol lower the efficiency of the machine, we can avoid their use. With proper care a poorly developed body may be improved and do effective work.
Eugenics.—When people marry there are certain things that the individual as well as the race should demand. The most important of these is freedom from germ diseases which might be handed down to the offspring. Tuberculosis, syphilis, that dread disease which cripples and kills hundreds of thousands of innocent children, epilepsy, and feeble-mindedness are handicaps which it is not only unfair but criminal to hand down to posterity. The science of being well born is called eugenics.
In this and the following diagrams the circle represents a female, the square a male. N means normal; F means feeble-minded; A, alcoholic; T, tubercular; Sx, sexually immoral; Sy, having syphilis. This chart shows the record of a certain family for three generations. A normal woman married an alcoholic and tubercular man. He must have been feeble-minded also as two of his children were born feeble-minded. One of these children married another feeble-minded woman, and of their five children two died in infancy and three were feeble-minded. (After Davenport.)
This chart shows that feeble-mindedness is a characteristic sure to be handed down in a family where it exists. The feeble-minded woman at the top left of the chart married twice. The first children from a normal father are all normal, but the other children from an alcoholic father are all feeble-minded. The right-hand side of the chart shows a terrible record of feeble-mindedness. Should feeble-minded people be allowed to marry? (After Davenport.)
The Jukes.—Studies have been made on a number of different families in this country, in which mental and moral defects were present in one or both of the original parents. The "Jukes" family is a notorious example. The first mother is known as "Margaret, the mother of criminals." In seventy-five years the progeny of the original generation has cost the state of New York over a million and a quarter of dollars, besides giving over to the care of prisons and asylums considerably over a hundred feeble-minded, alcoholic, immoral, or criminal persons. Another case recently studied is the "Kallikak" family.[35] This family has been traced back to the War of the Revolution, when a young soldier named Martin Kallikak seduced a feeble-minded girl. She had a feeble-minded son from whom there have been to the present time 480 descendants. Of these 33 were sexually immoral, 24 confirmed drunkards, 3 epileptics, and 143 feeble-minded. The man who started this terrible line of immorality and feeble-mindedness later married a normal Quaker girl. From this couple a line of 496 descendants have come, with no cases of feeble-mindedness. The evidence and the moral speak for themselves!
Parasitism and its Cost to Society.—Hundreds of families such as those described above exist to-day, spreading disease, immorality, and crime to all parts of this country. The cost to society of such families is very severe. Just as certain animals or plants become parasitic on other plants or animals, these families have become parasitic on society. They not only do harm to others by corrupting, stealing, or spreading disease, but they are actually protected and cared for by the state out of public money. Largely for them the poorhouse and the asylum exist. They take from society, but they give nothing in return. They are true parasites.
The Remedy.—If such people were lower animals, we would probably kill them off to prevent them from spreading. Humanity will not allow this, but we do have the remedy of separating the sexes in asylums or other places and in various ways preventing intermarriage and the possibilities of perpetuating such a low and degenerate race. Remedies of this sort have been tried successfully in Europe and are now meeting with success in this country.
Blood Tells.—Eugenics show us, on the other hand, in a study of the families in which are brilliant men and women, the fact that the descendants have received the good inheritance from their ancestors. The following, taken from Davenport's Heredity in Relation to Eugenics, illustrates how one family has been famous in American History.