Are Americans Degenerating?
Are Americans Degenerating? — Dr. Henry M. Friedman, in a recent article in the Journal of the American Medical Association, discusses the important questions, "Are the American people degenerating, physically?" and, "Are present modes of life affecting our size and working ability?" Dr. Friedman has had five years' experience as medical inspector at Ellis Island, and gives the results of his observation of immigrants and their physical condition, and then turns to the effect of present American methods on future generations. The bringing into the country of large numbers of inferior people is having its deteriorating effect; and besides this, our own mode of living is fast converting us into a race of "Lilliputians." There is an undoubted trend away from work that involves the use of the muscles. We are breeding a race of people with big minds and little bodies. People are willing to engage in occupations far more arduous, tho less remunerating, so long as it is not "menial" labor. The trend in this direction is poor economy, because our bodies are unable to supply the divers needs of an overactive mind. Overactivity of the mind leads to physical exhaustion. In every large center, we see evidences of the "strenuous life," in the people who walk with their heads down, fists clenched, and looking neither to the right nor to the left, as if they were "bucking" a football line. It is a constant nervous strain — "the pace that kills," and in bodies often so puny that the pace does not last long. This might be well enough if we devoted ourselves to methods to counteract this tendency and to keep up the balance between mind and muscle; namely, systematic physical training or exercise. Without this we will surely degenerate into a race of weaklings and neurasthenics.