The national annual unnecessary loss of capitalizednet earnings is about $1,000,000,000.
Report on National Vitality
SECOND EDITION
WHITCOMB & BARROWS
BOSTON, 1912
Copyright 1910
By Ellen H. Richards
Thomas Todd Co., Printers
14 Beacon St., Boston
Never has society been so clear as to its several special ends, never hasso little effort been due to chance or compulsion.
Ralph Barton Perry, The Moral Economy.
Not through chance, but through increaseof scientific knowledge; notthrough compulsion, but through democraticidealism consciously working throughcommon interests, will be brought about thecreation of right conditions, the control ofenvironment.
The betterment of living conditions,through conscious endeavor, for the purposeof securing efficient human beings, is whatthe author means by Euthenics.[1]
“Human vitality depends upon two primaryconditions—heredity and hygiene—orconditions preceding birth and conditionsduring life.”[2]
Eugenics deals with race improvementthrough heredity.
Euthenics deals with race improvementthrough environment.
Eugenics is hygiene for the future generations.
Euthenics is hygiene for the presentgeneration.
Eugenics must await careful investigation.
Euthenics has immediate opportunity.
Euthenics precedes eugenics, developingbetter men now, and thus inevitablycreating a better race of men in the future.Euthenics is the term proposed for the preliminaryscience on which Eugenics must bebased.
This new science seeks to emphasize theimmediate duty of man to better his conditionsby availing himself of knowledge alreadyat hand. As far as in him lies he mustmake application of this knowledge to securehis greatest efficiency under conditionswhich he can create or under such existingconditions as he may not be able wholly tocontrol, but such as he may modify. The[ix]knowledge of the causes of disease tendsonly to depress the average citizen ratherthan to arouse him to combat it. Hope ofsuccess will urge him forward, and it is theduty of lovers of mankind to show all possibleways of attaining the goal. The tendencyto hopelessness retards reformation andregeneration, and the lack of belief in successholds back the wheels of progress.
Euthenics is to be developed:
Students of sanitary science discover forus the laws which make for health and theprevention of disease. The laboratory hasbeen studying conditions and causes, andnow can show the way to many remedies.
A knowledge of these laws, of the meansof conserving man’s resources and vitali