Homo culture Part 7

"Mr. J. Mathews Duncan, in his work on Fecundity, Fertility, Sterility and allied topics, has given results of statistics which show that mothers of twenty-five bear the finest infants, and that from mothers whose ages at marriage range from twenty to twenty-five years there come infants which have a lower rate of mortality than those resulting from marriages consummated when the mothers' ages are smaller or greater. The apparent slight incongruity between these two statements being due to the fact that whereas marriages commenced before twenty and twenty-five cover the whole of the period of highest vigor, marriages commenced at five and twenty cover a period which lacks the years during which vigor is rising to its climax and includes only the years of decline from the climax."

This quotation from Mr. Spencer needs a qualifying remark. Mr. Galton, in his work on Hereditary Genius, found that the average age of mothers of men of the greatest ability was about thirty, and of their fathers thirty-five. In such cases, the physical and intellectual strength must have been above the average, and, consequently, it continued to a more advanced age. Besides, those of great ability mature later.

It may also be added that Duncan's statistics, quoted by Spencer, are average statistics gathered from tables of mortality, and include every cla.s.s of persons. Now, average statistics do not apply to individual cases, and they would not apply to those highly endowed physically and intellectually.

Further, those who are well endowed at birth and whose lives are in accordance with hygienic law, that is, those who do not squander their physiological resources by sensuality, by intemperance, or by excesses of any sort retain their health to a greater age than those whose lives are the reverse. Such are of a youthful physiological age, which is not altogether determined by the actual number of years they have lived, but by very high physiological conditions.

From all this we conclude that a very important rule in the production of offspring, if we would have those offspring superior, is to maintain a high degree of health--a condition in which there is a surplus of physiological capital to produce children with endowments equal to, if not superior to, their parents.

Another subject requires treatment here. It is the effect of alcohol on offspring. We are yet lacking in statistics giving the facts we need to know on this subject; but the general observation of competent persons who have had good opportunities to study it may teach us something.

Alcohol, in its circulation in the blood, penetrates every part; not even the germ plasm escapes. Demme studied ten families of drinkers and ten families of temperate persons. The direct posterity of the ten families of drinkers included fifty-seven children. Of these, twenty-five died in the first weeks and months of their lives; six were idiots; in five a striking backwardness of their longitudinal growth was observed; five were affected with epilepsy, and five with inborn diseases. Thus, of the fifty-seven children of drinkers only ten, or 17.5 per cent., had normal const.i.tutions and healthful growth. The ten sober families had sixty-one children, five only dying in the first weeks; four were affected with curable diseases of the nervous system; two only had inborn defects. The remaining fifty, 81.9 per cent., were normal in their const.i.tutions and development.

In this statement we have a graphic object lesson of the evil effects of alcohol on the germ plasm. Natural selection had far more to do in removing those unfit to survive in the intemperate than in the temperate families.

A knowledge of the evil effects of alcohol on the unborn child was known to the ancients. The mother of Sampson was warned "not to drink any wine or strong drink nor to eat any unclean thing" because she was to conceive and bear a son who was to deliver Israel out of the hands of the Philistines. Manoah was so interested in what the angel of the Lord had said to his wife that he sought an interview with him for further confirmation, and asked: "How shall we order the child, and how shall we do unto him?" evidently meaning, "How shall we train and educate him?"

and the same advice was given as before. Whatever view the reader may hold as to the inspiration or non-inspiration of the Bible, certainly this advice was good. Other examples similar to it are to be found, not only in the same book, but in numerous historical works, and also abundant evidence in our own time of the evil effects of alcoholic drinks on unborn children giving them a tendency to insanity, idiocy and other nervous diseases. A whole book might be written on this branch of our subject.

To what extent food affects the germ plasm we remain somewhat in ignorance. We know that it is from it that the body is nourished, and from it also the stored up or surplus matter in our systems is obtained.

The larger the surplus the more highly will the offspring be endowed with energy is a fact clearly set forth by Mr. Spencer. A surplus of fatty food stored up in the body, however, cannot be of much service and may prove injurious. A deficiency of nitrogenous food would also, it seems to me, be an evil. The germ plasm, or its most important part, is a highly nitrogenous substance, like all protoplasm, or living matter.

The highest form of germ plasm, that with a most complex molecular structure, would hardly be formed if there was a deficiency of nitrogenous matter in the blood.

Air is also food the same as bread is. The activities, the chemical changes in the body, are mainly, though not entirely, between the oxygen of the air and the carbon and hydrogen of our food. The body is quite as much injured by a deficiency of air inhaled into the lungs by exercise as by a deficiency of food, though the injury may be of a different nature. Physicians and others have long ago observed that the offspring of parents living much in the open air and sunlight are healthier and stronger than those of parents living in confined s.p.a.ces, where air and light are deficient. Air which is impure, which is loaded with poisonous matter, if inhaled for a long time by the mother, lowers the standard of her health. In malarious regions, the vigor of the offspring is less, and the number who die in infancy greater, than in regions where the air and water are pure. Many years ago I remember reading in one of the journals devoted to sanitary science published in London, an account of a rural town where both air and water were of extraordinary purity, and in this town a very large percentage of the children born lived to grow to maturity. There is also an isolated region in France, bordering on the sea, where both air, water and climate are unusually salubrious, and though intermarriage has been practiced for a long time among the several thousand inhabitants, the people are remarkably well formed and healthy. Similar facts have been observed in other places. They indicate to us that a healthful climate, with good air and water, are important factors in all true stirpiculture.

While all diseases which exhaust the physiological resources of the system are detrimental to the offspring, there are certain ones which are peculiarly so. Specific diseases or those resulting from a sensual life are the first to be mentioned. If the bodies of either father or mother become saturated with the poison, which is probably a germ, then the child born of such parents will certainly be infected and either die at birth or live only a short and feeble life. It is one of the penalties of an impure life--a very severe one, no doubt, but perhaps not too severe, that the offspring of the sensualist must suffer the penalties for its parent's physiological sins. Medical men have long been trying to discover a remedy which will make it safe for a man infected with specific disease to marry and become a father, but so far they have not had much success. It is doubtful if they ever will.

Epilepsy is another disease which is so often transmitted to children that any one of either s.e.x suffering from it had better abstain from parentage. If one parent is remarkably healthy, the children may escape the severest form of penalty; but even then they may suffer from nervousness and other diseases, and rarely enjoy robust health.

The question whether persons who have a consumptive tendency should become parents or not has frequently been discussed by sanitarians, but never settled. Such persons are frequently intellectual, and often of an unusually cheerful and hopeful disposition. They are, in most cases, quite prolific. In the female they generally make excellent wives and mothers; in the case of the male, they are not uncommonly good providers for their families, and also good fathers. Except in the worst cases, does the welfare of the race demand that they shall not marry and become parents. Probably not. But we must advise them to take the very best care of their imperfect bodies; to develop their chests by wise but not excessive physical training; to husband their physiological resources carefully; not to marry young, nor rear too many children. Excessive childbearing is a prolific cause in women of consumption, and excessive s.e.xual indulgence is a frequent cause of it in both s.e.xes.

These remarks should not be construed to mean that those who are already in the early stages of this disease, or whose families on both sides have been deeply affected by it, may become parents. They should not.

But in the present state of society, we cannot hold men and women up to an ideal standard. Some slight risks may be taken, but not too great ones. As the race progresses in knowledge, however, we may raise our standards, and finally make them so high that no one with a tendency to any serious disease which is likely to affect the offspring unfavorably shall have any right to contribute to the world's population.

I have mentioned only a few of the many diseases which affect the germ plasm unfavorably. It is hardly necessary to extend the list.

One other subject deserves consideration, when I will bring this chapter to a close. Every child born into the world is, to a certain extent, an experiment. That is to say, the parents cannot predict its s.e.x, nor what its chief characteristics will be. These depend on what potentialities are stored up in the germ plasm. If this be formed by parents in good health, with a surplus of vital force, and a long line of ancestors with normal lives, we may believe that if the environment be favorable, the child will develop so as to show the same characteristics, perhaps in an even higher degree. Whatever variations there are will not be much below or above the average line of its ancestors. The congenital characters will tend to be transmitted. They are in the germ plasm, even in great detail. Whether the acquired ones are transmitted may still be uncertain; but whether they are or not, normal right living will be sure to have good effects. Obey the laws of life and far better results will follow than if they are disobeyed.

FEWER AND BETTER CHILDREN.

In the present age suggestions on this subject may seem superfluous. The more highly educated and wealthy cla.s.ses have already sufficiently reduced the number of children which they bring into the world. But are these offspring any better than they would have been had their parents given birth to a larger number?

Mr. Darwin did not think much could be done to improve the race by parents limiting the number of their offspring. He would trust to natural selection to weed out the unfit, and to s.e.xual selection as an aid. He thus describes the probable manner of action of s.e.xual selection among primeval men: "The strongest and most vigorous men--those who could best defend and hunt for their families; those who were provided with the best weapons and possessed the most property, such as a large number of dogs or other animals--would succeed in rearing a greater average number of offspring than the weaker and poorer members of the same tribes. Such men would doubtless generally be able to select the more attractive women... . If, then, this be admitted, it would be an unexplainable circ.u.mstance if the selection of the more attractive women by the more powerful men of the tribes, who would rear on the average a greater number of children, did not, after the lapse of generations, _modify the character of the tribes_."

The way in which the tribe would be modified would be by its producing better children. Of course among primitive men the richer and more powerful had several wives, but it is not likely that the number of children by each one was large.

Natural selection is, however, a painful process, necessary, no doubt, where ignorance prevails; but if the number of children of each pair could be limited and of a superior character, so far as vigor and adaptation to environment are concerned, would there not be less need for natural selection with all its evils? It seems to us that this would be so.

We have already quoted Grant Allen as favoring abstinence from parenthood on the part of the unfit and the duty on the part of the fit to become parents, and, theoretically, Mr. Allen is right; but except as both of these cla.s.ses are swayed by duty we would make little progress in this way. A majority of mankind think they are the fit. Why should they crucify their desires for the benefit of the race? As mankind becomes more moral Mr. Allen's views may have a larger influence on thought than now; but before that time little can be expected from them.

Mr. Spencer says: "We have fallen upon evil times, in which it has come to be an accepted doctrine that part of the responsibilities [of parenthood] are to be discharged, not by parents, but by the public--a part which is gradually becoming a larger part, and threatens to become the whole. Agitators and legislators have united in spreading a theory which, logically followed out, ends in the monstrous conclusion that it is for parents to beget children and for society to take care of them.

The political ethics now in fas.h.i.+on makes the unhesitating a.s.sumption that while each man, as parent, is not responsible for the mental culture of his offspring he is, as a citizen along with other citizens, responsible for the mental culture of all other men's offspring! And this absurd doctrine has now become so well established that people raise their eyes in astonishment if you deny. But this ignoring of the truth, that only by due discharge of parental responsibilities has all life on the earth arisen, and that only through the better discharge of them have there gradually been made possible better types of life, is, in the long run, fatal. Breach of natural law will, in this case, as in all cases, be followed in due time by nature's revenge--a revenge which will be terrible in proportion as the breach has been great. A system under which parental duties are performed wholesale by those who are not parents, under the plea that many parents cannot or will not perform their duties--a system which fosters the inferior children of inferior parents at the cost of superior parents and consequent injury of superior children--a system which thus helps incapables to multiply and hinders the multiplication of capables or diminishes their capability must bring decay and ultimate extinction. A society which persists in such a system must--other things equal--go to the wall in the compet.i.tion with a society which does not commit this folly of nouris.h.i.+ng its worst at the expense of its best."

We have evidence among primitive people that they understand the necessity of limiting offspring, and practice it in a perfectly healthful way. The natives of Uganda, a region in Central Africa, offers an ill.u.s.tration: "The women rarely have more than two or three children; the practice is that when a woman has borne a child she is to live apart from her husband for two years, at which age children are weaned."

Seaman, speaking of the Fijians, says: "After childbirth husband and wife keep apart three and even four years, so that no other baby may interfere with the time considered necessary for suckling children."

Some fifty years ago there lived in New York a young couple, strong, healthy, ambitious to be rich, and both saving and industrious enough to become so under ordinary conditions. The husband was in a business which required constant attention; and in order to promote it and save the expense of help which he thought he could not afford, he labored nights, often up to the hours of twelve and sometimes one o'clock, and then arose early and went at it again. His wife sympathized with him in all his undertakings, helped him in every way possible, even to the sharing of his midnight toils. In no way did either of them spare themselves.

They knew something of the evils of poverty, and were determined that it should not always be their lot. Fortune favored them, and their bank account grew larger and larger until they could count the value of their possessions as amounting to several million dollars. They lived in a fine country seat, and could gratify every wish, so far as food, clothing, books and travel were concerned. During their early married life, when the strain of work was the greatest, two children were born unto them, both boys, and they are alive today; but are they a comfort to their parents, and a help in their declining years? Instead of this they are both deformed and cripples, unable to help themselves or do any labor. Their family physician has told me that the overwork and privation of the parents at the time of their birth and before, was undoubtedly the cause of the children's inferiority. A younger son born after the wife had ceased to toil like a slave, gives some promise of being a man of character.

We have here a typical case of strong, healthy parents, with a limited number of offspring, yet they were not superior. On the other hand, it would be easy to collect a large number of instances where the children in large families have had superior endowments. Take Benjamin Franklin as an example. He was the fifteenth child of his father, Josiah Franklin, and the eighth of the ten children of his mother.

It seems that superiority is a result of great vigor and perfection of body and mind and of abundant reproductive power. Where this is absent the children will hardly be superior. Yet in both cases a certain degree of limitation ought to be advantageous.

In conclusion, let me say what I have indirectly said already. Let the strong, the capable and the good rear as many children as they can without overburdening themselves in any way, and let the weak, the imperfect and the bad rear few or none, but devote their lives to perfecting their own characters. In this way the future race will be modified for good and not for evil.

A THEORETICAL BABY.

_Reported by request of Dr. Holbrook._

It was our first baby. I was making a living as a doctor by writing articles on the general care of the health; and my wife before her marriage had been a kindergartner, a trainer of kindergartners, and a lecturer to mothers on the scientific and expert methods of rearing children aright. We believed in the theories we had taught, and our baby got nothing else from the start. According to the first applied theory, we made our temporary home before the boy began to be, in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado; and were a large part of the time either in our garden or on horseback, in this perfect outdoor climate. My wife was entirely in love with me, and I made each day count for nothing more certainly than to deserve and return that sentiment of hers. We lived simply but freely, and had next to no anxieties. My wife had practiced general gymnastics for years; but for months prior to the birth of her boy, she every day went through with a series of special maternal gymnastics, by which the muscles that aid in parturition can be made strong and entirely to be relied upon. We were rewarded for this outlay of time in a delivery that was rapid and easy, without more than an ounce of haemorrhage, and everything so perfectly controlled that--except for the inconvenience of it--the presence and aid of the physician (myself) might have been dispensed with. Recovery was rapid also. My wife made no haste to get up, keeping quiet most of the time for two weeks, to ensure good milk. But she did a family was.h.i.+ng without effort after three weeks, and was on horseback again by the sixth week. The baby was not severed from his mother till ten minutes after birth (ensuring a better blood supply). Then he got no bath, no food, no dressing process; but was simply swathed in cotton batting and laid aside for six hours in a padded box-bed, surrounded by bottles of hot water, and covered with plenty of soft blankets, to sleep and get used to his new environment. On the second day we began rubbing him daily from head to foot with vaseline. His first bath, with a flannel cloth dipped in warm milk diluted with soft water and without soap, came when he was a week old, and was followed by the thorough rub with vaseline.

This bath he has had nearly every day up to date. He has often cried, or crowed and begged for this bath; but never cried during its performance, except when his clothes were being replaced. On the contrary, he enjoys every moment of it.

Feeding began with a meal every hour of the twenty-four, for the first week. Then night feeding was reduced to two meals, and he was fed every two hours, from four or five o'clock in the morning till nine at night, till two months old. About then he began sleeping right through the nights; and until three months old was fed every three hours of the day time; then for a month he went four hours between his meals. At his fourth month began the present regime of four meals _per diem_. Now and then he has cried in the night from thirst, and a few spoonsful of cold water have sufficed to send him off to sleep again. All in all, I think I could count on my fingers the times that he has wakened us out of hours, and not once has anyone walked the floor with him. In fact, no diversions of this sort have ever been practiced on him. He has never been rocked to sleep; whenever cross or fretful in the day, we have known that sleep was all he needed, and into his little bed he has been promptly plumped, and covered with a loosely knit afghan, tented on a light framework, which we call "the extinguisher." Here shut away and entirely unnoticed he soon learned to give himself up to his own reflections, and then presently to sleep. Thus we have kept down the first great nuisance of ordinary infancy, namely, egoism and a habit of howling for attention when no attention is really needed. But social relations, and those of the gayest, he has constantly with both his parents. We take up and make into play with him each idea of his own. We have shown him some finger-plays. In the main we leave him to originate his own amus.e.m.e.nts.

From the keeping of stomach and bowels absolutely healthy, by a regular and reasonable exercise of their all-important functions, not only has the boy been free from irritability, and spontaneously happy and self-amused, sometimes quiet, and sometimes jolly to overflowing. But the second great nuisance of those ordinarily attending baby-raising, namely, sour stomach followed by colic, was eliminated. A secondary result of this entire regularity of functioning at the upper end of the alimentary ca.n.a.l was that a like regularity set in at the other end.

That is, at the thirteenth week he began to have but one daily pa.s.sage of faecal matter, and that soon after breakfast. Of the approach of this act he notified his mother without fail, and thereafter we had no soiled diapers. Movements were received on pieces of old cloth, and cloth and all tossed into a pan of ashes, or the fire, when we had one. When, at six months, we put him onto cow's milk, mixed with thin graham porridge, to supply the extra nourishment demanded by rapid growth, he went up to two movements per diem--morning and evening. Thus, the third great nuisance of of diaper was.h.i.+ng was eliminated, in its more disagreeable feature. Eructation of curds, rashes, colic, diarrhoea--these common ailments of ordinary babyhood, we have never had a sight of. We believe it due solely to strict adherence to the four-meals-a-day plan. These consist of an early breakfast, a later breakfast, a dinner about one o'clock and a supper between six and seven. The bath comes at any convenient time. On pleasant days, even in winter, he is outdoors, well wrapped, in a chair, for hours, and often has a long nap there. He was provided, by my own needle and penknife, with an ample fur sleeping sack, into which he is securely b.u.t.toned every evening and laid in his box-bed, on a trunk. He never sleeps with his parents. According to the coolness or coldness of the nights, additional covering, in the shape of soft blankets and shawls, is laid in on the box, their weight supported by the edges of the box. He cannot uncover himself, but he can kick freely, and use his arms. We dressed him, from the first, in the "_Gertrude_" system of baby clothes, introduced by Dr. Grosvenor, of Chicago--all woolen princess garments, with s.h.i.+rring strings at the lower hems, by which they are made closed bags, ending just below the feet; warm, but allowing of kicking _ad libitum_. At five months--it being winter time--he went into short clothes, including solid suits of warm flannel underwear, s.h.i.+rts, drawers and long snug-fitting stockings.

He has never had a cold. His muscles, from the first (due to his mother's gymnastics), were firm and active, like those of an adult. At the fourth week he surprised us by suspending his entire weight from his hands and arms one morning. Legs, neck, back and hands particularly have developed steadily in power and quickness. There was never any fat deposited--that _avant courier_ of so much infant mortality--yet he is, and has been all along, a rosy, plump, dimpled baby, or boy, rather, for babyhood very early lost its hold on him. Too often children seem finally to emerge from the miseries and ailments of a tedious infancy and to take on, at last, individuality and distinct character at the second or third year. This child, _per contra_, having never had a sensation of illness, or of pain, save honest hunger, has seemed to be a happy little boy almost from the first, alert or thoughtful, shouting or cooing, laughing and crowing, especially after his meals and movements, studying the world of things about him by the hour, keenly appreciative of colors and of music, and preferring some sorts to others, his face crossed by vivid changes of expression, wonder, merriment, surprise, reverie--all as perfect at six months as ordinarily seen at three years.

He has good color from head to foot, is pale when hungry, but the moment a bit of food is down expands to his most genial flow of spirits.

Immediately after his day-time naps his cheeks are regularly flushed and rosy. His spirits become more p.r.o.nounced toward each evening, reaching their high-point of talking, laughing, crowing and squealing at just about bed-time. He keeps it up for some time after being tucked away for the night, till sleep masters him; and begins where he left off early next morning. All this is good physiology. So happy day succeeds happy day, and we trust and hope that many good tendencies are getting a fair start in a harmonious and spontaneous beginning of this great work of growing up that we are fostering but not forcing.

AT ONE YEAR OLD.--Everything continues as begun. Teething at times causes slight transient fretfulness, and more cold water is drunk. The bowels remain absolutely regular. The all-night sleep (never "put to sleep,") and two day-time naps are unchanged, in all thirteen or fourteen hours of sleep _per diem_. On warm days he needs _and gets_ plenty of cool water to drink, often two-thirds of a pint at a time.

Talking, standing and creeping he has attained by his own unaided initiative (this on principle). As for amus.e.m.e.nts, he invents his own always, except when engaged in social exchange with his father and mother, and in these, too, we are careful that he makes at least half the advances.

On particular occasions he comes in need of mothering--and gets it. On all others he simply lives with two big but highly sympathetic playfellows; and he has developed separate lines of play and talk for each. Often he chooses to alternate as between two poles of attraction, turning his face to his mother's for her sympathy between shouts to his father, or _vice versa_. From week to week we notice that the older plays are mostly dropped one by one, and fresh ones invented. All, however, are real and vivid to him.

In early prospect we have but two more points to compa.s.s. Perfect health in all respects he has intact. Self-control and self-sufficiency, both in amusing himself and in enduring lesser ills, such as b.u.mps and mild degrees of hunger, he is getting as fast as growth permits. But obedience and responsibility will soon be needed in his repertoire.

Negative obedience his mother is obtaining already in response to "No, no," and shakes of the head. Positive obedience will be the far more vital thing to secure--just as soon as he can help in little ways. Here we hope to make him responsible as far as can be for the welfare, safety and amus.e.m.e.nt of younger playfellows, whether brother or sister it is now too soon to say.

AT EIGHTEEN MONTHS.--A cold douche has, for three months past, ended his morning bath, regularly given by his father after his sister arrived, and his weight became considerable. This douche, poured slowly from a dipper until redness set in, has added markedly to his spirits, muscular activity and digestive capacity. It causes screaming at the moment, but an instant later, as three Turkish towels are wrapped closely about him, his exuberance is delightful to see. Coincidently he has taken up a selected diet of solid food, including chocolate and cooked fruits, and will have but one nap, though often that is a long one.