The Social Diseases: Tuberculosis, Syphilis, Alcoholism, Sterility

264 Pages·1920·15.71 MB·English

by  J. Hericourt

Social ^Diseases
*Dr. ^. Jfcericourt

THE
SOCIAL DISEASES

THE
SOCIAL DISEASES
TUBERCULOSIS, SYPHILIS,
ALCOHOLISM, STERILITY.
BY
DR. HERICOURT
J.
Translated, and with a final Chapter,
BY
BERNARD MIALL
LONDON
GEORGE ROUTLEDGE & SONS LTD.
NEW YORK E. P. DUTTON & CO.
:
1920

Annex
5018817
PREFACE
SOCIETIES have justly been likened to animal
organisms.
Like the animals, human societies possess the
functions of nutrition, relation, and reproduction
;
and the investigation of these functions, which may be
described as social physiology, was ingeniously
worked out, some fifty years ago, by Herbert Spencer.
On the other hand, just as the animals are prone
to various diseases, so human societies may suffer
from sickness, and as there is a social physiology
there is also a social pathology.
In the animals the malady of the individual con-
sists of a deterioration of the cells whose aggregation
forms the animal organism. Similarly a social
malady consists of the aggregate of the maladies of
the individuals the cells who make up a society.
It will therefore be understood that there can be no
social malady unless a large number of individuals
are afflicted with this malady, just as we cannot re-
gard an animal organism as diseased if only a few of
its cellular units are impaired.
The social maladies, then, are those which menace
the social units, both quantitatively and qualitatively,
and are thus capable of jeopardising the future of
societies.
These social or racial maladies, which have been
widely discussed duriWngethe last few years, we now
propose to describe. shall consider their nature,
their gravity, and their therapeutic treatment.
From this last point of view the investigation of
social maladies, if we can judge by past experience,
is apt to be somewhat disappointing; for the public
authorities who are responsible for their extent and
r-rv
.
VI PREFACE
their gravity though their responsibility is quite
impersonal have not hitherto had the courage to
deliver a frontal attack upon them.
Why is this? As we shall see, all social thera-
peutics must involve the modification of habits, the
enforcement of regulations and restrictions. Such
matters are avoided by politicians as fire is avoided
by a burnt child for politicians are the slaves of their
;
electors.
Consequently no therapeutics worthv of the name
has so far been applied to the social diseases, which
run their course unhindered some, indeed, mav even
;
have been favoured by the somewhat incoherent
measures of which they have been the object.
It is possible that public opinion, being at last
more alive to the ills with which our European
societies are threatened, at a time when their vitalitv,
owing to the War, is in other ways so profoundly
impaired, may achieve a beneficent reaction against
this condition of affairs, and insist that the repre-
sentatives of the nation shall organize the struggle
against the plagues that threaten us.
Such a reaction is urgently needed and it will be
;
found that the social diseases which we are about to
consider are most prevalent in those States which are
most highly civilised as though those nations whose
;
civilisation is of oldest date might be likened to aged
and therefore exhausted organisms, which are conse-
quently liable to functional breakdowns, and to para-
sitic invasions of their organs.
History shows us that societies die and vanish from
the earth as individuals do. The pessimistic may
there*fore re*gard t*he mala*dies o*f our #societies as
presaging their inevitable dissolution. But we would
fain believe that there is still time to postpone the
final collapse.
The diseases to which animals are subject and
the same is true of human diseases originate in