The Monte Vista journal., 1916-11-25
IMPORTANT SUBJECTS
DISCUSSED BEFORE
LARGE MEETING

| Superintendent Mccormick of the
! high school gave very interesting
| talks, which were highly appreciated
by those present
DR.. Trueblood read an excellent
paper on Hygiene versus Eugenics -
He endeavored to show what hygiene
has done for the human race in
making it better and lengthening the
average lives of individuals now.
Dr. Trueblood stated that "in by
gone days sickliness of people was
taken to be saintliness Artists in
the middle ages always chose for
their models sickly people, because
it was the old theological idea of
medieval times that the flesh was in
league with the devil and therefore
an enemy of the soul. Now, models
are chosen for their apparent health;
in other words, ideals in this respect
have been changed, and this has
been brought about largely by the
influence of the introduction of pre-
ventative medicine"
Continuing, the doctors address
was, in part, as follows:
THE medical profession in years
gone by has always been known as
the healing art, and that is rapidly
changing, and the art of preventive
medicine is of more Importance to-
day than the art of healing. This is
all known as 'prophylaxis'
'Eugenic' deals with the more
vital subject of improving the inher-
ent type and capabilities of the indi-
viduals of the future, and this eu-
genie improvement is attainable
through the control of heredity and
by heredity we mean the action of
the elements which control the de-
velopment of the individual and de-
termine his constitution or his
makeup.
we know at the present time the
laws of nature that control to some
extent every individuals constitution
or makeup, through laws which
have been taught us, first of all by
Mendel. Mendel was an Austrian
monk, who in about the year 1865
in working with peas, discovered a
law of heredity, and this has been
applied by other scientists to ami
mails and men.
This Mcndel law teaches us that
each individual is sub-divisible into
many distinct units or traits, the
hereditary source of which is clear
ly traceable, leading to various indi-
yiduals of the family line and not
to any individual alone. 1t is now
known that all the physical, mental
and moral peculiarities of the hui
man family are not scattered evenly
through the population, but exist on
the matter of tuberculosis, ten per
cent of all the people Of the United
States die of tuberculosis. but that
doesn't say that ten per cent of all
members of the family die of tuber-
culosis, but ten per cent is the aver
age of all. Some lose more than
half of their members while others
lose none or comparatively none.
Life insurance companies now
take general cognizance of this fact
because a history of tuberculosis in
family acts against a healthy indi-
vidual, as they know that certain
non-resistant types are transmitted
even though the disease itself is not
transmitted; consequently they don't
like to issue insurance to people
with family susceptibility to the
disease.
Not only in the physical make
up, but in the moral is this true
We find that $4,000 people are to-
day inmates of some form of penal
institution. They are not recruited
evenly from the population. The
history of the Jukes, a family the
descendants of which are noted for
their criminality, is well known:
while, on the other hand. among the
descendants of Jonathan Edwards
there are no criminals, or practically
none.
1--WE are now attempting to show
are dividing lines, along which we