G. P. Mudge, “Biology, Theology and Medicine in Relation to the State.” London Hospital Gazette, Yol. 17, No. S. May, 1911. pp. 189-193. As quoted by Leonard Cole at the First Conference for Race Betterment in 1914.
No doubt it seemeth right to alleviate misery, to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to pamper the useless, to preserve the criminal, to propagate the congenitally tuberculous and imbecile. But is it? When we have cast aside the garment of make-believe, by which the well-intentioned, the sentimental, the languidly pathetic, the short-sighted man of medicine, the socialistic place-seeker and others have woven around the stern facts of life, thereby masking the implacable laws of Nature, and when we honestly ask ourselves whether this road, which seems right to us, is in reality a path that leads to national destruction, then I do not think we shall proceed at the reckless pace which marks the present.
For so long as we do not hold fast to that immutable truth [of heredity], we shall recognize that from the race of civic cripples there is begotten a race likened unto them. Helpless, useless, dangerous, burdensome, and loathsome that they are, I say advisedly, carefully weighing my responsibility, that it is a social crime to do anything which shall encourage and facilitate their propagation. Every day that by the aid of medical science the lives of such are lengthened, and the procreation of their race thus far favored and increased, there is added a burden to the present and a curse to the future. It is facinorous to an extreme degree. It is sapping at the vigor, the health, the happiness, the social morality, and the civic cleanliness of the nation. A nation of cripples cannot endure. If it sinks not beneath the weight of its own helplessness and misery, it cannot escape destruction at the hands of a more virile people. Every medical enactment or sentiment which tends to the preservation of such people, also contributes to the undoing of the nation.
The medical inspection and treatment of school children; their free-feeding and free-clothing; their dental inspection and treatment; the recent puerile suggestion of a medical officer of health to compel certain people in a London borough to open their windows for two hours a day, and to wash their floors once a week, under a penalty of five pounds, are all delusions. In not one single tooth, nor in a muscle twitch, nor in the ionic equilibration of one twig of a single dendron shall we add soundness, or vigor or mental capacity to our national stock by such means.” […] “Medically inspect the earthworms in our gardens if we like, but earthworms they will be to the end of time.”
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