Is there, or is there not, a short cut to race betterment? Everyone interested in the welfare of the race must feel the necessity of getting at the truth in the case; and the truth can be found only by rigorously scientific thought.
Let us turn to the observed facts. This sample is taken from the health department of a popular magazine, quite recently issued:
"Since birth my body has been covered with scales strikingly resembling the surface of a fish. My parents and I have expended considerable money on remedies and specialists without deriving any permanent benefit. I bathe my entire body with hot water daily, using the best quality of soap. The scales fall off continually. My brother, who is younger than myself, is afflicted with the same trouble, but in a lesser degree. My sister, the third member of the family, has been troubled only on the knees and abdomen. My mother has always been quite nervous and susceptible to any unusual mental impression. She believes that she marked me by craving fish, and preferring to clean them herself. During the prenatal life of my brother, she worried much lest she might mark him in the same way. In the case of my sister she tried to control her mind."13
Another is taken from a little publication which is devoted to eugenics.14 As a "horrible example" the editor gives the case of Jesse Pomeroy, a murderer whom older readers will remember. His father, it appears, worked in a meat market. Before the birth of Jesse, his mother went daily to the shop to carry a luncheon to her husband, and her eyes naturally fell upon the bloody carcases hung about the walls. Inevitably, the sight of such things would produce bloody thoughts in the mind of the unborn child!
These are extreme cases; we quote from a medieval medical writer another case that carries the principle to its logical conclusion: