Royal Sanitary Institute

Abstract

THE twenty-fifth annual congress of the Royal Sanitary Institute, held at Brighton from September 5–10, was attended by upwards of 1200 members. To the address of the president, Sir John Cockburn, K.C.M.G., we have already referred (NATURE, September 8). Seeing that no fewer than sixty-three papers were printed in extenso, and many of them “taken as read” before discussion, it will be understood that it is impossible, within the limits of our space, to do more than glance at the general aspects of the work of the congress, endeavouring to indicate the drift of opinion on some of the more important questions which were raised. All problems relating to the health and physical well-being of the community are regarded as coming within the province of the Institute. In the Lecture to the Congress Dr. Arthur Newsholme set forth the now well-known statistics of diminishing birth-rate, and considered the arguments in favour of, and against, the present crusade against infant mortality. “Is it worth while to dilute our increase of population by 10 per cent, more of the most inferior kind?” The diminishing fertility-rate is as noticeable in the ranks of skilled artisans as it is in the ranks of the well-to-do. He concluded that it has not been proved that the inferiority of the offspring of the most fertile class, the unskilled, is due to inferiority of stock so much as to the unsatisfactory conditions into which they are born, and he strongly deprecated the attitude of that section of eugenists whose pass-word is “Thou shalt not kill, but need'st not strive Officiously to keep alive.” The services of health visitors and the adoption of the Notification of Births Act are, the lecturer considered, the most hopeful agents and means whereby the death-rate of early life may be reduced.