Charles Darwin, in his “Descent of Man,” published in 1871, writes thus of the appendix: “It is occasionally quite absent, or again is largely developed. The passage is sometimes completely closed for half or two-thirds of its length, with the terminal part consisting of a flattened solid expansion. In the orang this appendage is long and convoluted: in man it arises from the end of the short cecum, and is commonly from four to five inches in length, being only about the third of an inch in diameter. Not only is it useless, but it is sometimes the cause of death, of which fact I have lately heard two instances: this is due to small, hard bodies, such as seeds, entering the passage, and causing inflammation.”
But Darwin was not the first to recognize the uselessness and danger of the appendix, since M. C. Martins, in “Revue des Deux Mondes,” which was published in 1862, mentioned the fact that this rudiment sometimes caused death. Indeed it is said the ancient Egyptians knew the appendix became inflamed and caused death, but for this we can not vouch.
In spite of thesehintsof Martin and Darwin, physicians called the symptom syndrome of what is now known to be appendicitis, typhlitis or perityphlitis for years, although the cecum itself is seldom inflamed without some pathological change in the appendix. The latter structure, however,is often very badly diseased while the cecum is perfectly normal.
The first methodical operation for appendicitis was performed in 1886 by Reginald Fitz, and even today it is sometimes hard to persuade a patient to have this structure removed simply because recovery often occurs without operation.
The same author, Charles Darwin, in the same book, writes as follows: “Man scans with scrupulous care the character and pedigree of his horses, cattle, and dogs before he matches them; but when he comes to his own marriage he rarely, or never takes any such care. He is impelled by nearly the same motives as the lower animals, when they are left to their own free choice, though he is in so far superior to them that he highly values mental charms and virtues. On the other hand he is strongly attracted by mere wealth or rank. Yet he might, by selection, do something not only for the bodily constitution and frame of his offspring, but for their intellectual and moral qualities. Both sexes ought to refrain from marriage if they are in any marked degree inferior in body or mind; but such hopes are Utopian and will never be even partially realized until the laws of inheritance are thoroughly known. Everyone does good service who aids toward this end. When the principles of breeding and inheritance are better understood, we shall not hear ignorant members of our legislature rejecting with scorn a plan for ascertaining whether or not consanguineous marriages are injurious to man.”
Though the above was written thirty-five years ago, little real progress has been made in eugenics. It is true we have laws against miscegenation and against certain consanguineous marriages; some States have passed and other States have attempted to pass, laws making certificates of health necessary before marriage licenses can be issued; if we mistake not, in some States the habitual criminal is unsexed, and in many States this question has been discussed, butignorance in regard to the laws of heredity is still the rule and not the exception.
Wealth and social position, rather than health and intellectuality, determine as many marriages today as when Darwin wrote, and America’s highest legislative body has not yet repealed the law against the dissemination of knowledge of means to prevent conception. Yet too many children in poor families not only means dire poverty and unhappiness instead of comfort and happiness, but oftentimes desertion, divorce, forced immorality or crime. It is just as necessary to be able to limit the number of children so that each will at least get a good start in life as it is to bring healthy children into the world, since healthy children can not remain healthy and develop as well under unfavorable as under favorable conditions.
Did the law affect rich and poor alike it would not be so pernicious, but such is not the case, since the largest families in this country are found among the poor and ignorant, the very ones who can least afford to have many dependents. Without being so intended, it is class legislation. The healthy, well nourished and well educated class escapes, the poor, ill-nourished, and ignorant class bears the burden until this burden is shifted on society in the form of beggar, defective, imbecile or criminal.
If all the members of Congress made a tour of the tenement districts of New York or other large cities, saw the overworked fathers and overbred mothers, the ragged, ill-nourished and oftentimes diseased children, inquired into the total earnings of the family and the necessary expenses, ate of their bread and breathed their air, if our congressmen did this, then the fate of the law as it now stands would be sealed. But our congressmen are not going to make any such tour, they are not even going to inform themselves by study of the actual conditions, but will do something far easier by voting an appropriation for the study of hog cholera, the foot and mouth disease of cattle, the Texas cattle tick or some other measure of more apparent benefit to thepeople—and the congressman. To vote on appropriations like the above can not weaken the legislator, to vote to repeal the present law might lose him a large following in some communities. Yet the repeal of the present law in regard to preventives is the first step in eugenics, and without the repeal the best efforts of the best men and women will accomplish but little.—W. T. B.