Part 8

In this connection another figure, C 45, by von den Velden ought to be mentioned. He shows, from investigations made by von Riffel, that the +physical condition of childless couples is on the average inferior to that of fertile parents+. This, however, by no means holds good in every case. Evidence to the contrary is given by the pedigree of an aristocratic family which has died out in the male line. It may be looked upon as typical. One generation (the second), with three times as many grown up men than women, produces only four boys (44% of the children), of whom two reach maturity. With the fourth generation the male issue dies out. Though a large majority of the members of all three generations (2-4th) have good health and attain to an exceptionally high age, most of the female lines also die out. Only in two branches, which spring from the marriage of an aristocratic daughter with a man from the people, there are children in the fifth generation of whom at least a part promise a healthy progeny. Fahlbeck, too, has drawn attention to the fact that the dying out Swedish aristocracy shows no signs of striking degeneracy in the individual.

This fact is of the greatest theoretical and practical importance because it proves that there exists, up to a certain degree, an independent degeneration of the germ plasm, even as the germ plasm may remain unaffected by damage to the soma. That such a one-sided degeneration of the germ plasm with respect to the power of reproduction may take place among animals has been known for a long time.

In particular, Chs. Darwin has collected facts of this kind in his "Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication." For civilised peoples it is a matter for reflection that with animals even slight deviations from their customary "natural" mode of living may lead to such serious consequences.

RACE-HYGIENE.

[Sidenote: C 46 & 47]

As the +nature and aims of race-hygiene+ are still unknown in wide circles it will be useful to show in Tables C 46 and C 47, by A. Ploëtz, what its position is amongst other sciences and what the various branches of its activity consist in.

Many theoretical workers hold that the most important mission or race-hygiene is to fight against Therapeutics and Hygiene of the individual, for about these they have the most serious misgivings. They consider, that by maintaining inferior variations up to the age of reproduction, the average quality of the race must suffer and that to certain defects--which otherwise would rapidly disappear--an opportunity is given to spread through an entire people. This point of view, short sighted as it may be, must be examined into. It appears to be forgotten that on the one hand hygiene is powerless in cases of a high degree of degeneration and that on the other hand hygiene, by prevention of illness, does away with a number of causes of inferiority. Finally it appears to be entirely overlooked that with the best inherent qualities and unfavourable surroundings the individual development may be poor and stunted. Of what use are the highest potentialities if they remain latent? The main point is that so far convincing proofs of the preponderant harmfulness of hygiene are entirely absent. (S. Gruber, Heredity, Selection and Hygiene. Deutsche med. Wochenschr, 1909).

[Sidenote: C 48]

Dr. Agnes Bluhm contributes to the question of the deterioration of the race by therapeutic measures in dealing in Figure C 48 with "+The increasing frequency of surgical operations in connection with childbirth and its significance for the race.+" She writes in explanation "The number of doctors having increased relatively much more than the number of the population, it follows that for a growing number of women medical assistance at childbirth is available. To this must be added that progress in surgical technique, above all the diminished danger of infection, allows of a much more frequent operative interference with good results for mother and child. Both these facts find expression in the reduction of the number of stillbirths. The purpose of these operations being to assist a diminished birth capacity in women, and this diminished capacity arising partly from constitutional and consequently hereditary factors, this question suggests itself: Is the average birth capacity of women progressively diminished by the fact that an increasing number of women, more or less unfit for childbirth, are artificially assisted in bringing forth living children who inherit this weakness from the mother?"

"Our table attempts to answer this question on the basis of official Midwifery Statistics compiled in the Grand Duchy of Baden reaching back to 1871, that is the beginning of the antiseptic era.

"To avoid the errors, which small figures might lead to, each calculation has been based on the average figures of a lengthy period. The material dealt with comprises over two million births."

[Sidenote: C 48-1]

"Figure 1 shows the +increasing frequency of all childbirth operations taken together+. The period 1871 to 1879 shows an average of 4.38 operations to every 100 births, the period 1900 to 1907 up to 8.12 operations to every 100 births."

[Sidenote: C 48-2]

"Figure 2 shows the +frequency of each class of operation in every 1,000 births+. Each class of operation shows an increase in number, but the increase has not been uniform throughout the various classes."

[Sidenote: C 48-3]

"Figure 3, A and B, shows the +share of each class of operation in the total number for the various periods+. A more leading part is taken by aftermath operations, by artificially induced premature birth, by perforation of the head and by Caesarean section on the living. Aftermath operations depend (like the use of the forceps) to such a degree on the teachings of the various schools for midwifery (and on the time at the doctor's disposal) that they can hardly serve as a standard of birth capacity. The Caesarean section, too, can hardly be taken as a guide, as a much wider view is taken now of the indications for this operation. But the equally increasing numbers of perforations of the head and artificially induced premature birth are well worthy of attention. For these two operations exclude one another. With the existing tendency to avoid perforation of the head by artificially inducing premature birth, a rise in the curve of premature births should correspond with a sinking of the perforation curve. 1871 to 1879 a maximum of the former actually coincides with a minimum of the latter; but from there on both curves rise, though not in the same degree. Premature births have become since then (see Fig. 2) more than eight times as frequent; perforations of the head have trebled; and dismemberments of the child have doubled. This fact must be considered as a sign of lessened birth capacity."

[Sidenote: C 48-4]

"Figure 4 shows the +decrease of the total number of stillbirths+."

[Sidenote: C 48-5]

"Figure 5 gives the +share which abnormal position of the child has in this total+, and a comparison of the two shows that whilst the total has decreased by 1.42% the decrease (1880 to 1889) has been 2.35% in the case of stillbirth through abnormal position. The conclusion is, that there is now more opportunity for hereditary transmission of the tendency to faulty position of the child than three to four decades ago."

[Sidenote: C 48-6]

"But Figure 6 proves that up to now an +increased inheritance of this tendency has not taken place+. The curves of these positions not only show irregularities but (with the exception of cross births) a tendency to sink."

"Recapitulation. The growing frequency of surgically assisted births cannot be taken as evidence of a diminished birth capacity, but is closely connected with the growing number of doctors. Against the indications of a diminished birth capacity stand at the moment those which previously could be taken as pointing in the opposite direction. It would, therefore, appear that medical interference at birth has brought to the race advantages as to quantity and no drawbacks as to quality. But it is probable that the picture will change during the coming decades, because only then will the daughters of mothers who could not have brought forth living children without surgical assistance become themselves mothers. The renunciation of motherhood on the part of the women least suited for this function and the war against rickets might act as preventatives."

The great anxiety about the elimination of the severest struggle for existence is based on the undoubtedly erroneous fundamental conception that the organism is a sorry product of necessity which can barely manage to maintain a laborious existence by the constant straining of all its faculties, and that it requires the continuous use of the whip of necessity to prevent an organism from giving way to its inherent tendency to degeneration. In fact, however, no organism is conceivable which has not the "Tendency" to maintain itself and to react accordingly. There are many facts which prove that a wealth of capacities and tendencies is dormant in organisms which for innumerable generations have not been active, or, perhaps, have, never functioned in every possible way, and that, therefore, if the occasion arises replacements or accommodations of an unprecedented character may occur. In an unprejudiced system of race-hygiene these facts must not be overlooked. The exhibition in this section gives two specially striking instances; the one from animal the other from plant life.

[Sidenote: C 49]

To begin with Figure C 49 gives a diagrammatic representation of the +development of the eye of a vertebrate+--after K. Kraepelin (taken from "Experimentelle Biologie II., T. v. Curt Thesing, Leipzig, Teubner, 1911")--which shows that the lens is formed out of an invagination of the cornea and the retina by an extension of the brain. In the lower part of the plate the various phases of the +reconstruction of the lens out of the iris+ are shown, after it had been removed by a cataract operation from the eye of a Triton larva. (This experiment was carried out by Gustav Wolff.)[A] Thus an organ which normally is not concerned with the formation of the lens takes charge of its regeneration.

[Footnote A: Studies in the Physiology of Development II. Archiv. für Entwicklungs mechanic der Organismen, XII. Vol., 3 Part, 1901.]

A large number of tables deal with the influence of the numerical position in the progeny, with the number of births and the interval between births, on the health of the children, partly acting alone, partly in combination with the influence of the manner of nourishment during infancy.

[Sidenote: C 50]

+Numerical position in family and infantile mortality+, after Geissler. According to these statistics, the fifth child of a mother has materially less vitality than the first four, the second and third children have the most; but this does not agree with other statistics.

[Sidenote: C 51]

According to Riffel's investigations--+influence of the numerical position of the child and the age of the parents at the time of marriage on infant mortality+, after v.d. Velden, a material difference between the mortality of the three earliest born children and the three next born is only shown if both parents at the time of marriage have attained a certain age (man over 28, woman over 25); only the seventh to ninth show under all circumstances a materially greater mortality than the earlier children. The children of more aged parents show a materially greater mortality than those of younger parents. The number of children in a family up to the eleventh has no material influence on infant mortality, only in families with twelve children or more a materially greater number of children perish before the fifth year.

[Sidenote: C 52]

+Number of conceptions and conception losses+, by Dr. Agnes Bluhm; the exhibitor gives the following explanation--

Hamburger's material deals with 1,042 marriages of the labouring classes in Berlin, with a total of 7,261 conceptions (an average of 6.97 conceptions for each woman); the material of Bluhm comprises 856 marriages of the wealthier and educated German middle and higher classes with a total of 3,856 conceptions (averaging 4.50 conceptions to each woman). Hamburger has counted as conception losses only miscarriages, premature births, stillbirths, or deaths from illness before the completion of the sixteenth year. Bluhm has included all those up to the twentieth year. Both have only included marriages which have been contracted at least twenty years back. As the births in these marriages apparently date back to twenty years, all living children are reckoned as survivors or conception results, even if they have not attained the sixteenth or twentieth year respectively. This has influenced the result optimistically, but as it has done so with both authors alike, the comparison of their results is admissible.

[Sidenote: C 52-1]

Figure 1 shows the +conception losses in marriages of varying conception numbers+ (Curve A, Hamburger's working-men's families; Curve B, Bluhm's well-to-do families); both curves confirm Hamburger's words that "the percentage of the survivors gets smaller in proportion as the conception number increases." The mounting of Curve B in the families with ten births is probably a delusion brought about by a very small number. In the marriages with eleven or more births there are lost with the well-to-do one quarter and with the working-classes nearly two-thirds of the conceptions up to the twentieth or sixteenth year respectively.

[Sidenote: C 52-2]

Figure 2 represents the +share which miscarriages and premature births have in the conception losses in marriages of different degrees of productiveness+ (Curve A, Hamburger; Curve B, Bluhm). Amongst the Berlin labouring classes on the average 17.89 per cent. of all conceptions are lost through miscarriage and premature birth; for the wealthier German families the figure is 7.59 per cent.

[Sidenote: C 52-3]

Figure 3 shows the +share which deaths and stillbirths have in conception losses+. With the labouring classes it amounts on the average to 32.75 per cent. (Curve A), and in the wealthier families to 10.55 per cent. (Curve B).

[Sidenote: C 52-4]

Figure 4. To investigate whether the continuous decrease in the percentage of the survivors, going hand in hand with the increase of maternal conceptions, is caused by the constitutional inferiority of the offspring as the numerical position increases, Bluhm has established, in dealing with her material, the loss for each numerical position (first, second, third, etc., conceptions respectively). If this were the case, Curve A, which gives the loss according to the frequency of conception in each marriage, would have to be identical with Curve B, which gives the loss of first, second, and third, etc., conceptions, but this is by no means the case, for only at a very high numerical position of the conception the curves begin to be parallel. This proves that Hamburger's "the percentage of the survivors gets smaller in proportion as the conception number increases" is not a biological law but only expresses a social phenomenon. With the increasing number of children there is a decrease in the value of each individual childlife. The mother is less careful about avoiding miscarriages; she devotes, and must necessarily devote, less care to each child; and the risk of infectious diseases which are a frequent cause of death during infancy increases.

[Sidenote: C 53]

How little the increasing mortality of the later born children up to the tenth child is based on a biological law is shown in Figure C 53. +Numerical position of birth and infant mortality up to the age of five in princely families+, by Ploëtz; 463 seventh to ninth children show the same mortality as the 614 first born.

Pearson endeavored to prove a high degree of inferiority in the first born, physically and intellectually as well as morally. But his results are very open to attack, as Weinberg has recently shown; one is reminded of Pearson's results in Crzellitzer's Figure C 54--first and later born. Crzellitzer writes thus about this--"A +high degree of myopia+ is +more frequent amongst first born+ than among later children. The disadvantage of the first born in respect of myopia is based on a greater hereditary taint and on no other factor. Where there is no hereditary taint about one quarter to one-third are affected, no matter whether first, second, third, etc., born. Also in well-to-do families, where the age of fathers at the time of procreation is materially higher, the first born are more frequently myopic than their brothers or sisters."

A large amount of material has been treated by W. Weinberg, in which tuberculous and non-tuberculous families are compared.

[Sidenote: C 55 & 56]

Figure C 55--+influence of numerical position of birth on infant mortality+ and Figure C 56--+mortality of the first and later born+. Weinberg writes concerning these: "The parallelograms in the first row indicate for each position in order of birth how many children out of every hundred die before the age of 20. On this, however, the difference in the mortality in families with different numbers of children has an influence. To counteract this, it has been calculated how many children in each position would die if within each family the number of children had no influence, and the actual number of deaths expressed as a percentage of the expectation calculated in this way gives parallelograms to the second row. After eliminating the influence exercised by the size of the family, the increase of the mortality with the higher birth number appears considerably smaller. Figure C 56, which compares the mortality of the first and last born children, is to a certain extent a test of this. This shows clearly a considerably higher death rate in the last born. Both figures indicate that children of the same numerical position of birth show a higher mortality, if from tuberculous families."