435

SOME FEATURES OF THE POPULATION TRENDS IN CHILE DURING THE

LAST DECADE *

*These figures are taken from the Annual Reports (1961-64) of theStatistical Department of the National Health Service of Chile and theAnnual Population Report (1954) of the National Statistical Service andCensus.

t This figure, corrected for the increase in life expectancy of women between1954 and 1963, is 18.8.

developed many important social laws. In 1953 Parliament

approved family allowances for every child. This law increasedthe marriage-rate from 7-7 to 8-4 per 1000 population in onlyone year, and the percentage of illegitimate births fell from 20to 16% in a few years. This law stimulated the populationgrowth. But in 1961, another law started a populationexplosion. Parliament approved a law which established amonthly prenatal bonus paid to every pregnant woman fromthe fourth month of pregnancy. In 1964 this law was" improved " and now in Chile every woman is paid from thefirst months of pregnancy. These laws were passed to protectmother and child.

On July 1, 1965, Dr. Francisco Mardones, the leadingmedical expert on mother and child protection in Chilewho had instigated the prenatal bonus, became head of theNational Health Service. He has announced that in allChilean hospitals there will be a family planning advisoryoffice which will give all married women information aboutcontraceptive devices. In the five large general hospitalsin Santiago the obstetric departments have alreadyestablished departments of birth control which use intra-uterine devices. These measures, however, will beineffective in the face of the social laws of the last decade.Some observers think that the only way of stopping theChilean population growth is to pay every married woman,every month, for not having a baby. It is impossible tosuppress the " bonus " laws, or to change the deep-rootedreligious ideas of the female population. On the other

hand, politicians do not realise the importance of theproblem, and many of them think that Chile, with only8 million inhabitants in a country twice the size of theUnited Kingdom, is underpopulated. It seems that Chilewill be, in the coming years, one of the most importantbattlefields in the fight against overpopulation.

" ... Those of you ’ surgeons to be ’ (and I include theanaesthetists and dental surgeons) who remain in the UnitedKingdom will, in the not far distant future, find yourselvespractising your art in a more closely integrated Europe. It willbe a Europe in which the English language inevitably will be thelingua franca-the common medium of intercommunication indiplomacy, business, science, and medicine. But the greatEuropean languages will continue to flourish; as indeed will thegreat languages of the East. Their cultural heritage is some-thing in which we all share. Thus a great deal of the importantliterature of surgery will continue to be written in the French,German, Italian, Spanish, and Slav languages. I would urgeyou, therefore, before it is too late, to acquire a reasonableworking knowledge of at least two other European languages.We cannot expect our colleagues from other countries to begraciously bilingual or even multilingual, if in Great Britain weremain the last of the monolinguists !"-Sir HARRY PLATT,Ann. R. Coll. Surg. January, 1965, p. 56.

In England Now

A Running Commentary by Peripatetic CorrespondentsSICK of the Panda-like pigmentation induced by the Italian

sun and conventional modesty I paid a weekend visit to thenudists. I recommend the experience to anyone who is inter-ested in the biology of human releaser mechanisms-the studyof one’s own or a spouse’s anatomy under the conditions (nownormal) of domestic nudity doesn’t make the biological point.This is perhaps the nearest we can come to the social settingof the relatively few wholly unclothed aborigines, in which ourreleaser mechanisms must presumably have evolved. Thatmale primary characters look a little sorry under such circum-stances might be a cultural side-effect, but I had not previouslyrealised how little truth there is in the theory that clothingexists to protect the female from errors about her receptivity.Nature has done this for her-even when she is young and

beautiful; or is it that we have lost the old releasers and nowrespond to the convexities of an outline simplified by clothes ?At the other level, of course, the nudists have long since

made their point-almost wholly at the domestic level, andpartially at the public, where it can hardly be long before weall follow the growing minority who remove their clothing onbeaches for the pleasant sensation of nakedness without needingan -ism as cover. When the point is finally taken, it will be ajollier exercise than the colonial form of naturism. Under theseconditions the children come off best-they are the naturalnudists; the young enjoy themselves untheoretically-themiddle-aged, who predominate, still seem to be making a point.Psychiatrically it was a good point, unconnected with com-pulsive exhibitionism-that clothes are a symbol of inhibition,concealment, and alienation, that to put them aside ritually isa lay sacrament. This is probably the real content of theassociation of naturism with " positive health ", albeit poorlyverbalised. But the alienation is hard to shed-for the new-comer, used to nakedness as a pleasant sensation, its ritual

practice only engenders a transient feeling of unreality,heightened by meeting on the woodland path a stockbrokerwith pipe, briefcase, and spectacles, otherwise unclothed, butretaining his shoes and socks. Meanwhile the elderly majoritysit round drinking cups of tea outside a hutted canteen-thewhole thing has about it a vivid aura of the long-stay hospital,which brings together people with little in common. It isdifficult to avoid greeting one’s motherly neighbour with," Well, Mrs. Brown, and how is it today ? Massage goingnicely ? " At the same time the mickey is out of place. Onehas to be dogged to the point of humourlessness in order tomake one’s point, and the nudists of the twenties and thirties,grown old in the faith, have really done so. The young willfollow them and enjoy the sacrament without noticing that it isone. Kingsley Amis tells us, of the response of women to sexualpleasure, that " some take it like the Host, some like a toffee ".The young of the next generation may be able, like the Scan-dinavians, to enjoy their toffee weather permitting. In this

country it usually doesn’t. " We’ve had an awful year," saidthe naked lady in the canteen. It is, we agreed, the countrieswhere sunshine is plentiful and tiring which show the greatestinclination to cover themselves. There, pallor is a sign ofone-upmanship as great as bronzing in Anglo-Saxon cultures.

* * *

In our area a majority of the consultants visit peripheralhospitals at intervals to do operating sessions or to conductwhat we call " out-clinics ". As most of these hospitals requiresuch visits only once or twice a month, the usual policy is toset aside one or two days in each week for these duties. Thus onemight go to R on the first and third Friday morning in the monthand to P on the second Friday and C on the fourth Friday.The other day, while rain poured down outside, one of us

arrived so early for lunch in the mess of his main hospital thathe had read everything from Andy Capp to the Times fourthleader before the meal was announced. When a colleagueasked him if anything was the matter, he replied: " No, notreally, only the fifth-Friday syndrome."