Many theoretical workers hold that the most important mission or race-hygiene is to fight against Therapeutics and Hygiene of the individual, for about these they have the most serious misgivings. They consider, that by maintaining inferior variations up to the age of reproduction, the average quality of the race must suffer and that to certain defects--which otherwise would rapidly disappear--an opportunity is given to spread through an entire people. This point of view, short sighted as it may be, must be examined into. It appears to be forgotten that on the one hand hygiene is powerless in cases of a high degree of degeneration and that on the other hand hygiene, by prevention of illness, does away with a number of causes of inferiority. Finally it appears to be entirely overlooked that with the best inherent qualities and unfavourable surroundings the individual development may be poor and stunted. Of what use are the highest potentialities if they remain latent? The main point is that so far convincing proofs of the preponderant harmfulness of hygiene are entirely absent. (S. Gruber, Heredity, Selection and Hygiene. Deutsche med. Wochenschr, 1909). [Sidenote: C 48] [Illustration: The Increasing Frequency of Obstetrical Operations and their Significance to the Race. (Based on the official statistics of Baden by Dr. Agnes Bluhm.) Figure C 48.] Dr. Agnes Bluhm contributes to the question of the deterioration of the race by therapeutic measures in dealing in Figure C 48 with "+The increasing frequency of surgical operations in connection with childbirth and its significance for the race.+" She writes in explanation "The number of doctors having increased relatively much more than the number of the population, it follows that for a growing number of women medical assistance at childbirth is available. To this must be added that progress in surgical technique, above all the diminished danger of infection, allows of a much more frequent operative interference with good results for mother and child. Both these facts find expression in the reduction of the number of stillbirths. The purpose of these operations being to assist a diminished birth capacity in women, and this diminished capacity arising partly from constitutional and consequently hereditary factors, this question suggests itself: Is the average birth capacity of women progressively diminished by the fact that an increasing number of women, more or less unfit for childbirth, are artificially assisted in bringing forth living children who inherit this weakness from the mother?" "Our table attempts to answer this question on the basis of official Midwifery Statistics compiled in the Grand Duchy of Baden reaching back to 1871, that is the beginning of the antiseptic era. "To avoid the errors, which small figures might lead to, each calculation has been based on the average figures of a lengthy period. The material dealt with comprises over two million births." [Sidenote: C 48-1]