Secretary’s Table [excerpt]

     The assassination of President McKinley affords a theme for journals of every type, demonstrating, as no other method can, the profound impression made upon the American people by the act and the conditions making such a foul crime possible. The Bulletin is issued too long after the deed to add to the volume of discussion, except in this: Is there a physical basis assisting in the development of criminals of this type? Nor for a moment is it to be suggested that moral responsibility does not exist, nor necessarily even mental alienation. But the rather: are the physical surroundings—the housing, the condition of the atmosphere, relative density of the population, the food, the occupation and other factors of a similar nature—in any way contributory to that condition of the man which, in its final development, produces a Czolgosz? If any of the conditions, or any combination of them, are contributory, then the physician should study them, and for the same reason that he investigates the same conditions for the purpose of reducing the death-rate of a community. That the subject is much more complex and cannot be solved by such investigations alone, is no reason why the research should not be made, to assist in the more comprehensive study of the causes, in order that a means of prevention may be discovered, at once safe, efficacious, and humane.