Darwinism, medical progress and eugenics : the Cavendish lecture, 1912 an address to the medical profession / by Karl Pearson.

  • Pearson, Karl, 1857-1936.
Date:
[1912]
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Darwinism, medical progress and eugenics : the Cavendish lecture, 1912 an address to the medical profession / by Karl Pearson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    23/70 (page 19)
    THE CAVENDISH LECTURE 19 that within sixty years from 1865, namely, in 1925, we shall have reduced the death-rate by nearly 50 per cent, in this country. To this extent modern progress—chiefly medical progress—has sus¬ pended the action of natural selection. FATHER. PiQ_ ^—Diagram (1900 odd cases) to explain anomalous position of sons of delicate parents ; a much larger percentage of them die, and thus their health fails to be recorded. The more delicate the father the more children die. Does this suspension of natural selection really meanthat more ol the weaklings survive to propagate their kind ? Some light may be thrown on that point by considering the percentages of the population in 1881 and in 1901 in broad age-groups.