Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 10.djvu/210

198 the foramen magnum, the approximation of the temporal ridges, the lateral flattening of the tibia, the perforation of the humerus, the tendency of the pelvis to depart from its usual proportions, and, associated with all these, a rudeness of culture and the evidence of the manifestation of the coarsest instincts. He must be blind indeed who cannot recognize the bearing of such grave and suggestive modifications. But what application are we to make of such revelations if we vividly receive them as such? We are no longer to rest with the blind fatalism of the Turks, or listless resignation of the masses, but are to. make a living use of them. We are to trace evil and corrupt passions to their source. The dreadful outrages which shock us from time to time in the public prints are not instigated by an evil spirit, but are outbursts of the same savage nature which found more frequent expression years ago, and which are still present with the lower races of to-day. When the study of heredity reveals the fact that even the nature of vagabondage is perpetuated; when the surprising revelations of Margaret, mother of criminals, from whose loins nearly a thousand criminals have thus far been traced, are considered, common-sense will ultimately recognize that the imprisonment of a criminal for ten or twenty years is not simply to punish him or relieve the public of his lawless acts, but to restrain him from perpetuating his kind. No sudden revulsion of feelings and amended ways is to purify the criminal taint, but he is to be quarantined in just the same way that a case of the plague might be, that his kind may not increase. With these plain facts thoroughly understood, men high in authority must find some other excuse for the exercise of their pardoning power, and other reasons be given for allowing so large a proportion of criminals to go free. With the monstrous blot of Mormonism and free-love in our country, the statute-books are to be again revised from the standpoint of science, with its rigid moral and physical laws, and not from the basis of established usage or long-continued recognition.



N an average, one-half of the number of out-patients treated by a hospital-surgeon suffer from diseases due primarily to a want of knowledge of the laws of health and cleanliness. 1. The ignorance of hygienic laws, which affects so disastrously the health of the rich as well as the poor, exists chiefly in regard to dress, ablution, and ventilation. This statement may, at first, appear startling, but an enumeration of the diseases that, can be constantly traced to the above causes will show upon how sound a basis the statement rests. The 