(one of nature’s favourite devices) between the nisus formativus of the nemasperm
on the one hand and on the other a happily chosen position, succubitus felix,
of the passive element. The other problem raised by the same inquirer is
scarcely less vital : infant mortality. It is interesting because, as he pertinently
remarks, we are all born in the same way but we all die in different ways.
Mr M. Mulligan (Hyg. et Eug. Doc.) blames the sanitary conditions in which
our greylunged citizens contract adenoids, pulmonary complaints etc. by inhaling
the bacteria which lurk in dust. These factors, he alleges, and the revolting
spectacles offered by our streets, hideous publicity posters, religious ministers of
all denominations, mutilated soldiers and sailors, exposed scorbutic cardrivers,
the suspened carcases of dead animals, paranoic bachelors and unfructified
duennas — these, he said, were accountable for any and every fallingoff in the
calibre of the race. Kalipedia, he prophesied, would soon be generally adopted
and all the graces of life, genuinely good music, agreeable literature, light
philosophy, instructive pictures, plastercast reproductions of the classical statues
such as Venus and Apollo, artistic coloured photographs of prize babies, all
these little attentions would enable ladies who were in a particular condition
to pass the intervening months in a most enjoyable manner. Mr J. Crotthers
(Disc. Bacc.) attributes some of these demises to abdominal trauma in the case
of women workers subjected to heavy labours in the workshop and to marital
discipline in the home but by far the vast majority to neglect, private or
official, culminating in the exposure of newborn infants, the practice of
criminal abortion or in the atrocious crime of infanticide. Although the
former (we are thinking of neglect) is undoubtedly only too true the case
he cites of nurses forgetting to count the sponges in the peritoneal cavity is
too rare to be normative. In fact when one comes to look into it the wonder
is that so many pregnancies and deliveries go off so well as they do, all
things considered and in spite of our human shortcomings which often
balk nature in her intentions. An ingenious suggestion is that thrown out
by Mr V. Lynch (Bacc. Arith.) that both natality and mortality, as well
as all other phenomena of evolution, tidal movements, lunar phases, blood
temperatures, diseases in general, everything, in fine, in nature’s vast workshop
from the extinction of some remote sun to the blossoming of one of the countless
flowers which beautify our public parks is subject to a law of numeration as
yet unascertained. Still the plain straightforward question why a child of
normally healthy parents and seemingly a healthy child and properly looked
after succumbs unaccountably in early childhood (though other children of the
Page:Ulysses, 1922.djvu/401
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