1. Among the agencies under social control which impair the racial qualities of future generations, an important place is taken by the Science of Medicine, especially by Obstetrics. For the increase of obstetrics increases the incapacity for bearing children of future generations.
2. The great difference in the capacity for bearing children between the primitive and civilized races depends only in part on the lessened fitness of the latter due to the increase of skilled assistance.
3. Incapacity for bearing children can be acquired; it develops, however, abundantly on the grounds of a congenital predisposition.
4. In so far as the latter is the case, obstetrics contributes towards the diffusion of this incapacity.
5. The most serious obstacles to delivery are effected by deformities of the pelvis, in at least 90% of which heredity plays a part. In this connection, rickets, the predisposition to which is inherited, takes the foremost place.
6. German medical statistics make it appear probable that incapacity to bear children is on the increase.
7. Medical help in childbirth brings, undoubtedly, numerical advantage to the race, but it endangers the quality of the race in other ways than through the fostering of unfitness for bearing.
8. The danger of the increase of incapacity for bearing through the increase of assistance in childbirth can be combatted:—
(a) Through the renunciation of descendants by women unfitted to bear children.