Is sanitary legislation therefore a failure, or by what means can light from the sun of knowledge penetrate this dense mass of ignorance and apathy? For what reason has it opposed such a resistant surface to the manipulations of the reformer or to the coercions of the official? These questions do not, unfortunately, admit of concise or conclusive replies.
Each political party in turn points the finger of reproach and derision at its opponents for the modest success by which their legislative efforts at social reforms are attended. Disease, malnutrition, alcoholism and overwork continue to hamper their efforts, and will continue so to do, until a sanitary conscience is awakened in each breast, at an age when habits and ideals are still unformed.
There is no royal road to the solution of these serious problems. They call for infinite, patient and untiring tact, while they also demand the employment of many and varied well-considered 228 methods, based on a sound foundation of sanitary and social science. The day for reform by theory is over; the moment for practice by individual example and co-operative effort has arrived.
V. SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF MAN’S PHYSICAL NATURE
Before proceeding to suggest some means by which to increase the stability of the national health through the agency of family life, it will be advantageous to recall the advice given to students of any form of life by Professor Arthur Thomson:—that they should, before attempting to form conclusions as to its nature, submit its constitution to analysis, with the assistance of what he described as the biological prism. This, he says, will throw light on the inherited nature of the creature—the capital, so to say, with which it is endowed at birth. It will illuminate the functional nature of its parts, and will reveal what it does in the course of its ceaseless activities—nervous, muscular and organic. Further, the prismatic rays will render visible the results of some of the influences dependent upon the environment with which it is surrounded, which play upon it before and after birth. Unfortunately these rays, when directed to human nature, cannot penetrate so deeply nor divulge so clearly the secrets of this the highest and most complex form of life, as they do when directed to its simpler manifestations. All ordinary difficulties are enhanced 229 by our human capacity for racial admixture and the creation of an artificial environment.
This much, however, is clearly revealed by a partial analysis. Human beings, in common with all life, are distinguished by the power of movement, and are sensitive to many forms of external stimulus:—heat, cold, electricity, or pressure. They pass their lives in rhythmic alternations of activity and repose; they breathe; they absorb food to supply energy and to maintain unimpaired the substance of their bodies; they excrete waste products. They share with plants and animals an intrinsic tendency to continue their growth for a certain period and up to a definite amount, while, at the close of the most pronounced period of growth, ability to transmit life absorbs the energy hitherto utilised for personal development, by which means the perpetuation of a species is secured. Research shows, also without possibility of question, that certain similar characteristics distinguish the mechanism of every type of animal life; though the machinery be in some cases of the simplest, in others highly complex. Thus have been revealed many secrets of man’s physical nature; as, for instance, the knowledge that, in the earliest stages of their existence, higher forms of life recapitulate more or less imperfectly certain far-off ancestral phases of development, of which living specimens are still to be found on the lower branches of humanity’s huge genealogical tree. By means also of the close and detailed observation of these lowlier organisms a clearer 230 conception has been formed of the intricacies of growth and the prolonged process of development in mankind. Just how human beings have come to be what they are, mentally and morally as well as physically, is a still unsolved problem. There are, of course, many missing chapters in the long story of life, though so far no contradictions have been detected in its arguments. The sad side of this biological lore exists in the now ascertained fact that the highest intellectual and moral powers, those last to develop, are the first to suffer arrest or to die away when the organism is subjected to premature exhaustion or to precocious responsibility. Predisposing causes are found in disease, dissipation, or defective nurture.
Another of the more important lessons to be learnt from the pages of this book of life’s history is the conservative influence of the law of inherited nature; a law which makes for the preservation of racial types by suppressing wide deviations from the normal. A familiar illustration of this may be found in the fact that the children of parents of great height or of very short stature usually revert to the average of the race. The significance of this genetic relation in maintaining an efficient people was unrecognised until quite recent times, and though valuable evidence is accumulating on the descent of hereditary character in mankind, no definite conclusions have yet been reached on the intensity of the transmission of qualities. It is, of course, a subject of intense complexity, the full discussion of which is here impossible. In the 231 interests of future generations it is, however, to be wished that more thought were given to the conclusions it is allowable to draw. “If,” for instance, says a recent writer, “instead of allowing the race to mate at random we selected both parents for some one quality, we could raise the intensity of inheritance and establish gradually, by continued selection, a strain in which the quality reached a value much higher than the average in the original mixed race....”[99] Thus could a race be strengthened for life’s calls, or, on the contrary, until and unless the people are awakened to the existence and bearing on their national security of such fundamental hygienic influences, it can be emasculated. No such selection is likely ever to dominate human marriages, but an appreciation of these and similar facts is fundamental to national progress; and in time the dissemination of such knowledge will be considered a parental duty, the more urgent since the resources of civilisation and ill-regulated sympathy have combined to brush aside the sterner laws of nature, so that the deteriorated threaten to become the chief progenitors of the next generation.
During the process of studying the abundant evidence of life’s progress from the simple to the complex, it becomes also apparent that it is affected by forces other than heredity. Recognition of the ever-present influence of these potent but often disregarded forces makes for harmonious living, whereas their neglect is associated with 232 heavy penalties. I refer to the capacity for individual variation from the racial type; to the modification of each individual by his or her surroundings; and to the personal predisposition, technically described as diathesis, which influences the reaction made to every form of stimulus. Of these three forces, the first is the result of an inborn tendency to deviate from the ancestral type; an orderly process with a definite intention, by no means a mere chance fluctuation. This certainly makes for progress as well as for interest in life, though it enhances the difficulties of education, because it demands the adaptation of conditions to each individual’s requirements. The second, the law of modification, takes into account the influence of environment upon inherited nature; the effects of climate, and food, for example, or of forms of occupation. Predisposition is, of course, a personal quality—a factor of primary importance in our susceptibility to or power to resist disease or in our capacity to withstand adverse conditions. This property is responsible for the greater or less degree of adaptability to new conditions possessed by each of us, and is concerned with our power to live in tune or at discord with our surroundings.
Another biological law, that of periodicity,[100] or of rhythmic alternations of activity and rest, has hitherto often suffered among human beings 233 more in the breach than in the observance of its tenets; though unquestionably conformity to its requirements makes for health and stability. Throughout nature habits of rhythmic, organic activity are too familiar to attract attention. Of these, the periodic return of the seasons, for instance, or the daily tides, the flowering of plants and the ripening of fruit, the migrations of birds and the hibernation of certain insects and animals, are obvious examples. These rhythms have been proved by experience to be advantageous in the world. They make for efficiency and economise energy, and, from their high degree of development in man’s nature, it may be fairly assumed that to him their observance is of great consequence. Many of them are beyond his control; such, for example, as the diurnal variations of his body temperature, the beating of the heart, the call of hunger, or the rhythm of growth. Others he can observe or abuse according to his pleasure; sleep, for instance, or the rhythm of work, or the daily discharge from his body of its waste products.[101] It is the work of hygiene to demonstrate how to combine obedience to all these laws with the demands of modern existence, and it is the duty of man to conform reasonably to modes of life based on these demonstrations. More especially does responsibility for the establishment of certain rhythms, such as sleep, devolve upon the organiser of a child’s early life.