(Automatic transcript - may present inaccuracies)

>> Good evening. In cooperation with the New York Academy of Medicine, your City-Station brings you the third of the current series of Lectures to the Laity. The Lectures, now in their 21st season are presented by the Academy free of charge at the Academy's auditorium from which we're now broadcasting. The talks are intended to acquaint the laymen with significant developments in medicine and to offer insights to the various processes by which these developments are achieved. The season's theme is Medicine and Anthropology. Our speaker tonight is Dr. F. S. C. Northrup, Sterling Professor of Philosophy and Law at Yale University and his subject, "Cultural Mentalities and Medical Science." Now to introduce the Chairman of the Evening, here is Dr. Harold Brown Keyes.

>> Dr. Harold Brown Keyes: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Again, on behalf of the Committee on Medical Information, we welcome you here. Our Presiding Chairman of the evening is Dr. Robert S. Morrison, Director of Biological and Medical Research of the Rockefeller Foundation. Dr. Morrison was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, was educated at Harvard University and received his degree of Doctor of Medicine in 1935. Dr. Morrison remained at Harvard as Austin Teaching Fellow in the Medical School and served in turn as Instructor in Physiology, Associate in Anatomy, and Assistant Professor until 1944 when he joined the Rockefeller Foundation where he is now Director of Biological and Medical Research. It is my privilege to introduce to you, the Chairman of the Evening, Dr. Robert S. Morrison.

>> Dr. Robert S. Morrison: Ladies and gentlemen, one of the things that all of us medical men and laymen alike are indebted to the Cultural Anthropologist for is their careful definition and study of the concept of culture, not culture as we are used to using it in the old phrase, "Cultured Gentleman" but culture as a determinant of human behavior in almost all its aspects. If anybody belongs to an ordered society responds to its cultural inferences in almost everything that he does. Once the Anthropologist has succeeded in establishing this point, they went on to admit the phrase, "Culture Contact." [Inaudible] made a very useful way of explaining some of the things which happened when people who represent one culture come in contact with those of another. We're all familiar these days with the sorts of misunderstanding which occur under these conditions and it's perhaps a little picturesque to note that there was a physician, I believe a psychiatrist, with a special interest in Cultural Anthropology on the Pacific Coast who called attention to the fact that some of the misunderstandings which may occur when a doctor takes care of a patient may also be looked upon as phenomena of culture contact in that the training that a physician has over such a long period and his association with other medical men may give him a different sort of understanding of such a phrase as "Blood, Sweat, and Tears," than that which is the -- used commonly by mankind. The physician thinking of blood as a physical chemical system, it's an interesting one to study and the person in the general public more likely to think of blood in a more mystical or symbolic sort of sense. Now, we find ourselves in the middle of a series of lectures which are exploring other sorts of contacts between medicine and various aspects of culture. I think we're especially fortunate tonight in having with us a person who has spent a large part if not all of his life, exploring culture contact on a very large scale. He is not a professional Anthropologist, indeed his title suggests that he has sort of interest which brings him between two cultures, that of Philosophy and the Law. As I said before, he has usually attacked this problem on a larger scale in the Cultural Anthropologist. There's some people who feel that the Cultural Anthropologist has his subject to a sort of occupational illness which causes him to put a very high value on very small islands in the South Pacific. Dr. Northrop has not fallen pretty to this illness. He thinks of things in a larger way. About a decade ago, he took on the job which Rudyard Kipling said was impossible and came up with a book entitled, The Meeting of the East and the West, . Two or three years later, he came up with another one, The Taming of a Nation, , a study of the cultural basis of international policy. I'm afraid that he may feel a little restricted by the title tonight which is merely "Cultural Mentalities and Medical Sciences." With very great pleasure, I introduce to you, the Sterling Professor of Law and Philosophy at Yale, Dr. F. S. C. Northrup.

[ Applause ]

>> Dr. F. S. C. Northup: Dr. Morrison, Dr. Keyes, ladies and gentlemen, one of the major developments of this century is the insight into the diversity of human mentalities which has come from cultural anthropology and the comparative philosophy of the world's cultures. This insight is already transforming the lawyers conception of law. The militarists plans concerning strategy and the statesmen's awareness of what he and his diplomats must know, if foreign policy is to be based on objective knowledge about what other people think and are most likely do, rather than upon wishful thinking. The implications for medicine are I believe, equally important. These implications show in three ways. First, when modern medicine is applied to non-Western people. Second, when people with one cultural mentality migrate to a nation or area whose people have a different cultural mentality, and thirdly; when diseases prevalent and often incurable in modern Western societies are not found among so-called primitive people. Any traveler to the Far East, the Middle East, Africa, or even across the Rio Grande into Mexico knows what it means to have dysentery. He soon learns that he must avoid uncooked vegetables and drink only boiled water. Even these precautions turn out as a rule, to be insufficient. In fact, prolonged living in some of these countries, even when the Western housewife continuously supervises the native cook, carries with it frequent bouts of intestinal disturbances. Nor do lectures to the native cook or even the public health officers about night soil and polluted water sufficed to remove the disease. In 1949, the speaker was in Mexico City conversing with Dr. Manual Gamio, Director of the Instituto Indigenista Interamericano. Dr. Gamio described the failure of an attempt made by Mexican public health officers to purify the water supply of a local village by the simple and normally sufficient procedure of adding certain chemicals at specified intervals. Not only did all efforts to this end fail, but a bitter reaction of the natives resulted. Investigation of the source of the bitterness revealed that in their conception of natural phenomenon, water was regarded not merely as the creative source of life, but also as the model of goodness and even of the sacred. Thus, in the native mind, to put chemicals in the local water supply was to tamper with the morally good and to be guilty of sacrilege. From the standpoint of their mentality, the water supply in its native state was good. For it to be bad in a medical or in any other way was to them, unthinkable. In classical Chinese thinking also, water is regarded as the model for human conduct. Since by its resiliency when struck with the hardest object, it is never destroyed yet at time, it is able by itself to wear away molecules. These examples suffice to make one principle clear. Effective medical science must give as much attention to the mentality of the patient as to the chemistry of his disease. In 1950, the speaker was taken by an American doctor to the native village of a country bordering on the Mediterranean. The capital of this nation has been under dominant Western influence for many centuries. The doctor who represented the medical division of one of America's major foundations was supervising the public health program of the native village. This village but 60 miles from the capital city had been chosen for an experimental health program because its health conditions were found after an international survey to be about the worst in the world. Within a period of three years, Western doctors working with native assistants had succeeded by a relatively simple and inexpensive procedures in raising the health of this village practically to the level of a modern Western society. However, as we drove back to the capital, the American doctor said the prospects for the future were not too encouraging because experience had shown that when the Western medical supervisors leave, the health conditions tend to return to their previous state notwithstanding the native health officers' continued use of the modern Western ways. In support of this judgment, the American doctor described the following experience. Some 10 years before in another village in the same nation, Western doctors had not merely raised the health of the village approximately of modern Western standards, but were also convinced that they had trained the native health officer in knowing what to do to keep it there and in grasping the modern Western mentality necessary to understand why things had to be done in that way. Nevertheless, with the departure of the Western advisors, the health of the village reverted to approximately to its original low state. The new practices were continued in a mechanical sort of way but with all social habits returning and accompanying them and with corners cut here and there in such a manner that the pollutions and the old infections returned. It became evident that the native health officer, for all his modern indoctrination and practices did not understand what he was doing. Dr. Lyle Saunders described similar behavior on the part of the Spanish Mexicans in the Southwestern United States. Not only are the old medical ways preferred, but -- and I quote, "If the Anglo methods are adopted, their effort to see maybe reduced by the failure to grasp the reasons behind their use. The scissors after being washed with soap may be dried with an unsterile cloth or placed on a table that has not been cleaned. Water that has been boiled maybe poured when cooled into an unsterile container. The new procedures are not understood in terms of the Anglo reasons for their use but instead are fitted into the already existing pattern of understanding with respect to causation and healing of illness and disease." The reference to causation in Dr. Saunders's statement is important since it shows that even a so-called primitive people have a particular philosophy of natural phenomenon. These experiences make another principle clear. Effective medical science is more than a set of concrete practical prescriptions for the cure specific unhealthy conditions. It is also a comprehensive way of thinking about ever fact of nature and every act of daily life upon the part of the physician, the public health officer, and the patients. Practical prescriptions without the philosophy of natural science which they presuppose for their meaningfulness and the philosophy of social behavior and of culture which they need for their reinforcement are frequently worthless. A fourth concrete experience will indicate perhaps why this is the case. The occasion is January of 1953 in the office of the Ambassador to the United States in a South American country. The Ambassador spoke of the experiences of a medical commission which had been investigating the malnutrition of Indians in back countries high in the Andes. The investigations had shown that it seemed unwise for the United States to appropriate Truman point for aide to increase the productivity of the native Indian agriculture before certain medical programs were introduced, the reason being that the Indians, due to a chronic intestinal infection were able to derive from their existence food supply only 40% of its normal nutriment. Hence the eradication of this infection by drugs which is relatively easy chemically would be equivalent to more than doubling their food supply. Unfortunately this medical program failed for the simple reason that the natives Daily habits of walking barefoot and sleeping on earthen floors produced reinfections faster than the drugs could cure them. This experience shows that the effectiveness of a drug in destroying the bacterial infection of the people depends not merely on the demonstrated chemical capacity of the drug to kill that bacterium when isolated in a pharmacologist's laboratory. It depends also on the waking and sleeping habits of the people to whom the drug is given, which habits in turn derive from that people's mentality. Without altering the way in which they think about the earth and about water and what each contains by way of entities, dangerous to health, and about the relation of their bare feet or their washed vegetables to earth and water. That is, without altering their basic philosophy of natural phenomenon so that in every moment of their waking and perhaps even their sleeping lives, they clone themselves and behave in a new way, the modern drug may be of little avail. The foregoing considerations do not mean that there is no effective way to apply modern Western medicine to non-Western people. They do mean, however, that for success to occur, both the scientific and the cultural mentality behind modern Western medical ways, and the different mentality of the native people must be taken into account and combined so that the one reinforces the other. In other words, effective medical science is concerned with the relation between a specific set of practical prescriptions and two different mentalities. One; the mentality specified by the basic concepts or philosophy of the physical, physiological, chemical, and psychological sciences which much be grasped if the causes of the disease and the accompanying personal and social practices necessary for their medication are to be known and understood. And secondly, the mentality specified, by the way of thinking about natural phenomenon and personal and social behavior that is the philosophy of nature and of culture of the patient, or the people, to whom the medical prescriptions are prescribed. As Dr. Saunders generalizing from his medical experience with the Spanish speaking people of the Southwestern United States has written in his book, Cultural Difference in Medical Care quote -- "The practice of medicine always involves interaction between two or more socially conditioned human beings, and takes place within a social system that defines the roles of the participants, specifies the kind of behavior appropriate to each of these roles and provides the sets of values in terms of which the participants are motivated." When the medical prescriptions and public health practices and the basic scientific cultural mentality which they presuppose for their effectiveness are those of the culture of the patient as is the case with many patients, born and educated in modern Western cultures, the mentality of the patient tends automatically to provide the state of mind, the daily behavior necessary to make the modern medical practice effective. In the United States for example, the people generally have become so accustomed to thinking about themselves and the phenomenon of nature in terms of unobservable or exceedingly microscopic entities such as atoms, electrons, and bacteria, that the conception of clear water as polluted or the danger of eating vegetables fertilized by human excrement presents little if any problem for them. It does not follow however, that the diversity of cultural mentalities presents no problems for medical science in modern Western societies. There are First Generation Immigrants in the United States. The medical problems that arise when people migrate to a nation with a different cultural mentality. The Puerto Rican community here in New York City provides one example. The Italian community in my New Haven, Connecticut another. There are of course, many other instances in other nations as well as in the United States. Most of the Puerto Ricans in New York or the Italians in New Haven come from peasant communities. These peasant communities have their indigenous norms and standards which give each person his or her emotional sense of belonging and the moral needs for social conduct. Hence is the sequel we will show. Most of these immigrants in the United States were in the land of their birth reasonably at peace with themselves emotionally and morally responsible socially. Consider what happens to these first generation Puerto Rican and Italian immigrants -- when they placed their children in the public schools of New York or New Haven. To begin with, English rather than Spanish or Italian is the spoken language. Moreover, it must be spoken if the sensitive child is not to be teased and made miserable by his or her fellow students, with an American rather than a Spanish or an Italian accent. This Americanized English the boys and girls soon acquire at school, but struggle as they may, this is too much for their parents at home on 120th Street or on East Grand Avenue. The Spanish -- with the parents, the Spanish or Italian accent persists. In the child's mind however as fashioned in school, to speak broken English is not to belong. It is not to be truly American. Under such circumstances it is very difficult if not impossible for the First Generation boys and girls to avoid being emotionally disturbed by, if not socially ashamed of, the speech of their parents. Here arises the first break between the parents and their children nor does the curriculum in the schools help matters. It is Anglo-American literature, an Anglo American legally constructed and individualistic centered social theory, not Italian or Spanish literature, or Italian -- or Puerto Rican emotionally felt and family-centered social behavior which is taught. Also above everything else, civics and the American way of life must be emphasized. Now certainly, it will be said, this is all to the good. Do not the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States with its Bill of Rights give these new Americans both the opportunity and the protection of their liberty to believe and to worship as they [inaudible]. The answer of course, is, "Yes." But in doing these things which are obviously good, from the standpoint of the Puerto Rican and Italian immigrants as well as that of the rest of us, this same American constitution does one other thing which those of us who cherish it's many merits have overlooked. It means, to use the language of Sir Henry Main and his classic work on ancient law that these children of newly arrived Italian and Puerto Rican parents are being shifted from the family centered and supervised personal and social ethics of the Law of Status mentality of their parents to the legally constructed and prescribed and contracted individualistically centered personal and social ethics of the Law of Contracts mentality of the new American community. Forthwith, not only do the Italian or Puerto Rican parents fail to speak the same language as their children, but they also find themselves and their children meaning different things by the word "good" when any language is spoken. But it may be said, neither the parents nor the children know anything about the distinction between the Law of Status and the Law of Contract mentalities. This unfortunately is true and makes matters all the worse for neither party understands what is happening to him. Both the newly arrived parents and the first generation children do know very well, however, that in the United States, it is proper for young boys and girls to sit together in the same classroom, to make public social engagements wholly independently without consulting their families, and to carry out these public engagements without the continuous observation and chaperonage of their own parents or of anybody else's parents. This means concretely that the individual young person is being related to the sanction for moral and legal behavior not immediately by way of his parents and his family as the Law of Status morality and society requires, but directly by his or her own independent decision and consent to contractually construct illegal statutes or social engagements after the manner of the Law of Contracts. To see why this gives rise to serious medical, social, legal, and moral problems for both the parents and the children, an examination of the mentality and social ways of the cultures from which the parents have emigrated is necessary. Such an examination has been carried through by Phyllis Williams for the South Italian villages from which the great majority of Italian immigrants in New Haven have come. Her study shows that following things. First, the communities are village communities dominated by the campanilismo mentality. Campanilismo means that which is within the sound of the village church bell. This mentality expresses the fact that for these people, the commune or village is everything and the stake is very little. In other words, the widest, acceptable social norms are those between the villagers, practically all of whom know one another. For example, in one of the states in Southern Italy, there are 91 villages which have practically no connection with one another and accept little if any political authority beyond the local village. As one New Haven Italian would just returned to visit -- from a visit to the land of his birth said, "I say Italy, but for me as for the others, Italy is the little village where I was raised." Secondly, these Italians -- these Southern Italians do not speak the Italian of Rome and the Northern cities. Each village or local area speaks its own dialect. This generates the paisano mentality. Paisano means a person from the same linguistic district or town as the speaker. This mentality has important moral and social consequences. First; it is regarded as bad for a child of one village or local linguistic district to marry the child of another. Second; hospitals are regarded as bad and are to be avoided as our Westernized doctors from Naples, Rome, or Northern Italy. The reason for this moral judgment is that these doctors and hospitals are introduced and financed in considerable part by the Federal government and the campanilismo paisano mentality causes anything coming from outside the village to be regarded as bad. The villagers believe also in a different type of medical practice which is Phyllis Williams and Henry's doctorate [inaudible] have shown is typical of so-called primitive people the world over. This belief leads them to regard hospitals merely as devices of the doctors to make use of the native villagers as experimental material for the study of diseases which the doctors do not know how to cure. Needless to say, this mentality has produced problems for the medical profession and the visiting nurses when these Italian villagers have immigrated to New Haven, Connecticut. Another characteristic of the Italian -- of the Southern Italian native mentality is what has been described as an inclination to procrastinate and a take it easy attitude. This way of thinking and behaving is called Pazienza which means patience. Pazienza leads modern westerners someone erroneously to describe such people as figless. It is more correctly described, I believe, as behavior in accord with the immediately felt and sense rhythms of nature in which one is immersed. This attitude is not peculiar to Southern Italy. As a French observer noted at the beginning of the 19th Century, quote, "Europe ends at Naples and it ends there badly enough, Palabra, Sicily, all rest is Africa." This is an indication of the mentality of the South Italian with the African mentality by way of contrast means that Naples and Rome and Northern Italy have been Romanized whereas the area south of Naples have not. To be Romanized is to be brought not merely under the medical, moral, and social ways of thinking, of Greek mathematical science, but also under the universalized personal, social, and political norms, broken free from family, village, and tribal ties, of the stoic Roman lawyers use [inaudible] and the Roman Christian Church Catholic. This universalizing mentality of the stoic Roman lawyers [inaudible] is the origin of Western legal science and it's Law of Contracts. Let it not be forgotten also that the literal meaning of the word "Catholic" is universal. It is in this universalizing mentality of Greek mathematical physics and stoic Roman law, passing over later into the Roman Catholic Church which begins the lengthy process of freeing moral and social man from family, village, and tribal man to identify him and the citizens that with indivualistically assenting and contractually specify universal man. This is the universalizing mentality also which went into the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and the Constitution of the United States and which expressed itself recently through the Supreme Court in its momentous decision on segregation in education in this country. It is in this same difference between the Italian parents' Law of Status, family, and village centered mentality and the Law of Contract mentality and its moral and social ways, that gives these South Italian parents their shot, their moral shot when their children come home from the public schools in New Haven. Our comprehension of the depth and the magnitude of this shock will become more evident if we shift our attention from the [foreign language] mentality of the Southern Italian village communities from which they come to the morally proper behavior of boys and girls within those villages. The family in Southern Italy is extremely patriarchal. This means that the father is not merely its head, but also that he has absolute power and authority, not merely to thrash his children, but also to beat his wife. Moreover, such fatherly discipline is regarded as morally good by both the mother and the children. So much as this is the case that the wife gives her husband absolute devotion and loyalty even when he does not deserve it. The practical consequences are interesting. Both illegitimacy and abandonment of children are lower in Southern Italy than in Northern Italy or in the United States. Also, divorces are unknown. Such patriarchal moral authority does not mean that the moral status of the mother in such families is completely -- is a completely secondary or degrading one. With her children, her authority is absolute. "I obey my mother's word which is like the God," is the way one Italian son in New Haven has described her moral position. The mother has two other major responsibilities. She selects the wives of her sons, she is also the keeper of the family purse. Her husband's as well as her unmarried children's earnings go into this purse. Again, we see the Law of Status, ethical mentality of the family at work. What an individual earns even when he is head of the family is not his. It is the trust of the family and the mother is the executrix of that trust. Also, the mate that a son chooses for his wife is not his to select. It is that of the family as arranged by his mother in negotiations of the mothers of other families solely within the village of the paisano mentality. Is it surprising therefore, when Phyllis Williams finds such elites coloring the lives of even third generation Italians in New Haven, that she finds also that many Italian parents there bitterly dislike the kind of man that America makes available as a mate for their daughters? The mother has another responsibility which is instrumental in the selection of proper wives for her sons and the securing of proper husbands for her daughters. Any morally or socially accepted daughter must go to her wedding bed a virgin and it is her mother's responsibility to see that this is in fact the case. This is a real, not a nominal requirement and necessitates in their minds consequence that no morally and socially acceptable daughter can be seen in public with a young man unless accompanied by and under the direct observation of her mother. For this reason, the classrooms for boys and girls in Southern Italy are not merely in different buildings, but on opposite sides of the village. Even when an engagement to be married has been arranged by the parents, the young man and the young woman can meet but three times between the date of engagement and the moment of marriage and these three meetings must be in the home of one of the parents with the young man and the young woman continuously on different sides of the room. The Indians of Mexico exhibit a similar mentality. If, in the village of Taxco, one goes on a Saturday evening to the delightfully located bar designed for tourists. Overlooking the main village square by the Baroque Cathedral, one must see mothers entering the square from every direction accompanied by their daughters as the young men and their fathers enter independently. Some of the fathers carrying musical instruments proceed to the bandstand in the middle of the square. Around the square, there is a very wide walk lined on the inner side with wooden benches. The mothers with their daughters seat themselves on these benches while those fathers in the band prepare to play and the other men and boys form little conversational cliques about the square. When the band strikes up, the daughters arise from the benches and walk in arm locked groups of twos or threes in one direction around the square while the young men walk in the opposite direction. After a time, a young man selects a young woman and they walk around together. Shortly more and more of such pairs fall. The social ceremony continues until the band plays its final piece and the daughters to their mothers return home together. The important thing to note about this custom is that everything occurs under the eyes of the parents, [inaudible] the parents of one family conversing with those of another. This interesting social ceremony enables us to understand and appreciate the emotional and moral disturbances that occur when such parents living in New York or New Haven see what happens to their children in our modern schools. Not only do they find themselves beginning to [inaudible] alienated from one another because the parent's broken English and the children's enforced in [inaudible]. But there is also the shock to the parents of seeing the young boys and girls go off to school together with no parent of any girl constantly watching. This is followed by the even more disturbing experience of learning that one's own daughter has made a social engagement with a boy without the parents of both being consulted or being acquainted with one another. But even this experience is as nothing to the one which occurs when that girl returns home late in the evening after several hours of public or semipublic association with a boy under no parental chaperoning's whatever. To appreciate the magnitude of this emotional and moral shock, it is necessary to know the way Italians in Southern Italy think about women. Every woman falls into one of two classes. The first class contains a -- those unmarried girls who never appear in public except with their mothers and b -- those married women who never appear in public except with their husband or with another married woman who is a Pisana, that is a woman who speaks the village or local dialect. Any other unmarried girl or unmarried woman is immoral, not merely in theory, but also in all likelihood in fact. Moreover, the latter type of woman is regarded as morally fair gain for any male. The double standard of morality for men arises precisely from the latter belief. It will be well for modern criminal lawyers, judges and policemen with their law of contract brutality, to keep the foregoing way of thinking about women in public and proper behavior for young men and young women in public environments. When they come upon the deeds of passion and forth, and the juvenile delinquency in our modern western cities. To realize the cultural mentality and morality of the community from which the youth's parents, who perhaps even the youth themselves have come is to see that we are confronted in our juvenile delinquency with the moral confusion that must result. When a woman appears in public in a way [inaudible] from the standpoint of her cultural mentality is proper and moral and from the standpoint of the youth on the street with a different cultural mentality is improper and hence in his mind, is an invitation to a particular response on his part, which in her culture is a crime, but in the culture of his parents is morally and legally sound. Need one wonder [inaudible] that when an Italian parent in New York or New Haven recently arrived from Southern Italy sees his high school daughter come in at 10 o'clock at night after an unchaperoned date with a young man whom the father or mother does not know and who's family they do not know, that Phyllis Williams finds, "To the girl's parents, this behavior [inaudible] nothing but [inaudible]. They cannot conceive of such a presocial light not leading to further liberties of an indiscreet [inaudible]." Some Italian parents in fact, excited by the threat of such vile behavior to their family honor, have succeeded in placing their daughters in institutions for wayward girls in the [inaudible]. Need one wonder [inaudible] that these immigrant parents believe that the coeducation of the American public school system has devastated their own morale. The effect upon the sons and daughters of these parents is equally disturbing and immoral. The girl who comes in at 10:00 knows that she -- that what she has done has been innocent and that such social behavior is regarded as quite proper by her non-Italian classmates and by their parents. Yet these ways are not understood by her parents, hence she has no way of explaining her behavior to her parents to ease their moral consternation and worst fears, nor if she follows her parent's moral convictions and advice by breaking off all such social engagements with her non-Italian schoolmates, can she make such behavior intelligible to them. Under such circumstances deep seeking emotional and neurological conflicts are likely, furthermore, Phyllis William's investigations show that in -- in fighting straight laced parental demands, recriminations follow and then beatings and the rift between parent and child grows widely. Professor Irving Child is made a study in New Haven of the [inaudible]. Three major types of reaction occur. One [inaudible] the rebel reaction. It consists in a break from the parents. The second is the in-group reaction. And if the son or daughter attempt to remain within the parental family and behave according to its mentalities, its mentality and moral way. The third is the apathetic reaction. It attempts to combine the two and results in the lack of joy and spontaneity, which the adjective apathetic describes. The in-group reaction is probably doomed to failure by the overwhelming dominance of the larger community. In New Haven, Italians are but one quarter of the population. The rebel reaction leads naturally to the marrying of a non-Italian girl. The results of this are often tragic, notwithstanding the acceptance of the new mentality, the old ways are [inaudible] emotionally and unconsciously and carry into as noted above even the third generation. The following is an actual instance of what may happen. A young second generation Italian in New Haven married a non-Italian wife and came to the social agency in New Haven asking for instructions on how to obtain an immediate divorce. But happened he described as follows. He had come home for dinner and he had washed his hands in the sink turning to reach for the towel, which according to his parents example, his wife was supposed to be holding [inaudible] for him. He saw her sitting in a chair reading the newspaper and paying no attention to him. He -- he rebuked her irritably and she answered, "I am not your towel rack." He could hardly believe his ears, forgetting about dinner, he left immediately to find his way to the social agency. Phyllis Williams notes that both have swept off parts of the old code after all, he was sinning according to his parent's code in contemplating divorce rather than mere separation. Here we come to the real tragedy of the situation. The boy or the girl is torn away and the moral norms of the parent's mentality by the acceptance of certain ways of the new community, while also being captured unconsciously and habitually by the ways of his parents. The danger then is that the child falls between both moral [inaudible] torn by emotional conflicts within, force and the flouting of all moral rules of both communities [inaudible] seem to be the only way to [inaudible] his integrity. Consider also the similar plight of the Italian daughter who is unable to restrict the moral accepted ways of the American school community yet having the southern resist the -- the ways of the American community and yet having the southern Italian daughters affection for her mother. She too is torn by the conflict between the new ways and her mother's ways. The Sicilian lament expresses this tie as [inaudible]. Take this letter to my mother and if she weeps, tell her that I too weep. Thinking how strange it is that I am in this far off land. Is it a wonder that such frustrating persons find themselves in the hands of the doctor, the public health nurse, the judge and even the jailer. Such at least are some of the problems, which the migration of the people with one cultural mentality to a community with a different mentality present to modern medical and legal science. There remains a third respect in which cultural mentalities are important for [inaudible]. This becomes evident when we note some diseases of modern western societies. During the aforementioned visit to Mexico City, I met one morning with Dr. Zuburan and Chavez [assumed spelling] in the latter's office in the institute -- The National Institute of Cardiology. Our appointment was for nine o'clock, the clock showed that it was two minutes of nine. Commenting upon this fact I said, "Of the many appointments during my three weeks in Mexico City, this is the only one in which all participants have been in on time." I presume this is because my previous appointments have been, for the most part, with [inaudible], whereas this appointment is with scientists in a scientific laboratory. Dr. Chavez, who is one of the world's leading authorities on diseases of the heart and arteries replied to the following effect. "You are probably right in saying that the modern scientific mentality is the reason for the discrepancy you [inaudible]. I am not sure however, that this mentality is a good thing. I say this because autopsies made here in this laboratory of his Indians who've spent their lives carrying heavy loads from the Valley of Mexico City, which is 7500 feet above sea level, up the sides of the surrounding mountains show that their arteries often possess the elasticity of those of young children." European pathologists who make these autopsies simply cannot believe their eyes. There is so little if any hardening of the artery. Dr. Chavez added, that when Mexican -- Mexico's native Indians receive a little modern education and intermodern politics, they also achieve the distinction of having extensive hardening of the arteries after the manner of good modern westerns. In 1953, the doc -- the writer told Dr. James Hannah, who practices medicine in Northern Rhodesia of Dr. Chavez' observations. Dr. Hannah replied that the same phenomena occurs with his African Negros. On December 8, 1955 a listener of London [inaudible] a broadcast by [inaudible] Morris of the British Medical Research Council. He shows the coronary thrombosis is a peculiarly modern and a peculiarly western disease. These observations make another conclusion [inaudible] the modern mathematically exact scientific mentality and social behavior expressing itself through modern medical science, cures certain diseases only at the cost of creating others. One escapes typhoid, malaria and dysentery to be sure, but -- but acquires ulcers, hardening of the arteries and coronary thrombosis perhaps in their [inaudible]. Why does the modern western mentality have this debit side of its medical [inaudible]? An examination of the mentality of the African, the Chinese and the humanistic Spanish, Indian, Mexican who are fearful of absolute commitments and somewhat casual about appointments grows considerable light upon this question. The Spanish Mexican word, which expresses this mentality, is manana. The corresponding Cantonese, Chinese word is [inaudible]. Manana means let's put it off until tomorrow or do it when we feel like doing it if we possibly can. [Inaudible] means perhaps. The southern Italian word we have noted is [inaudible]. If one asks the reason for this [inaudible] manana mentality, the answer will be as follows. Such a way of thinking and behaving as good because it brings man into harmony with nature or preserves the cosmic equilibrium. Two points are to be noted in this type of answer. First, the individual thinks of himself as immersed in nature and as responsible for the preservation of the harmony of nature. Second, goodness and health are conceived as accepting and conforming to nature's rhythm and balance. In practice, this means restoring the harmony or equilibrium when nature gives an immediately felt warning that a disharmony or disequilibrium is occurring. Evil and disease result when such warnings are not heeded. As Dr. Siegarest [assumed spelling] has noted, when a Navajo feels bad all over, it is because he felt out of harmony with the forces of nature. To any primitive person, nature's warnings that something is wrong are not ambiguous. They come -- come concretely in ones feelings, one feels bad all over. When such emotional irritation is felt, the non-westernized native interprets this as nature telling him that it is time for a siesta and at a little patience with respect of when the job gets done is to be applied. Furthermore, empirical observation shows that when emotional irritations come cannot be predicted. Consequently, if one is to heed nature's warnings, future commitments must be fastened to a [inaudible] and made and met with a manana attitude in mind. Such a philosophy of nature and of social relations is hardly conducive to an inner conflict or to a physiological strain upon the vascular system. Now the first effect of a modern western commercial society upon nonwestern peoples is to provide [inaudible]. It immediately disrupts the traditional physiological and social habits by providing -- providing oil lamps, which lighten the brightness of day -- lengthen the brightness of day for work and conversation far beyond the nature -- the natural day span. Here we probably have the first step down the road to hardening of the arteries, which modern western ways impose upon premodern man. The subsequent steps have their source however, in a different factor. This factor becomes evident when we examine the mentality, which brings one to a nine o'clock appointment at two minutes of nine. The individuals concern must have mechanically exact watches or there must be frequently spaced public clocks, moreover these watches and clocks must be socially and exactly synchronized. For this synchronization, there must be an absolute standing, which is set by a social convention. This social convention requires the use of the western law of contract with its legislated statutes supplying equally to all men. Also, this absolute standing set for the contractual legal mentality must be located somewhere. It is not an accident that Greenwich is in the modern European western portion of the world or that the Bureau of Standards is in Washington. Furthermore, the unwestern native -- unwesternized native with merely natures emotive warnings and immediately sensed dawns and dusks is quite incapable of even grasping to say nothing about understanding the legally sanctioned Greenwich standard of time. Only an astronomer who is a mathematical physicist and who is equipped with a very fine telescope constructed upon the basis of the principles of mathematical optics can determine the time of the Greenwich standings. Now mathematical physics requires a quite different way of thinking about space and time or anything else, from that which exhibits itself in a time sequence that is based upon ones gross esthetic sense of day and night or ones uncomfortable or uncomfortable emotive feelings concern when it is time to get up or to take a siesta. Newton at the beginning of his [inaudible] pointed out the difference between this mathematical type of time and -- and sense time. Need -- need one be surprised therefore, that modern man whose mentality and social engagements derive from Newton's quantitatively and publicly precise mathematical way of thinking about time is able to keep and make exact appointments, whereas people whose mentality and social behavior derive from directly sensed and emotively felt time, find this difficult if not impossible. Need one be surprised also perhaps that when the former type of cultural mentality and behavior causes its adherence to ignore natures warnings by way of the emotively and bodily felt irritations that diseases of the heart and arteries occur for such people which do not occur for so-called primitive people with their different philosophy of time and of social engagements. Should one wonder also, after driving the human emotional and physiological being to a coldblooded time schedule in which the mechanical clocks hands stands over ones head like a policeman's club, in total disregard of one's physiological and emotional feelings and warnings that nature rebels with a physical explosion that blows one's hearts or arteries [inaudible] all with an epidemic of emotional explosions that fill the doctor's offices, the divorce courts and the ever increasing number of hospitals to overflowing with chronic neuritis. Consider by way of contrast that the sense of time and the emotive effects of a non-western mentality. One is reminded of a contemporary American Negro, known to all followers of professional baseball as Mr. Satchel Paige. His Christian name was acquired because Mr. Paige refused to grow old. With the result that the teams for which he played died before he did. And he was forced as a consequence to carry his beliefs, took [inaudible] to carry his equipment over the decades from one baseball club to another. In recent years, he was a relief pitcher with the Cleveland Indians and the St. Louis Browns. Some of the more serious anthropologists have investigated his ways and his mentality. They have found that the newspaperman, notwithstanding countless efforts could never obtain from old Sach a [inaudible] satisfactory statement of his age. Yet his answer was quite clear, he was 49, meaning of course, approximately. And 49 it remained in the sports writer's reports over the years. During the time when the [inaudible] ball players and the university education Jackie Robinson knees, muscles and reflexes gave out in the mid 30s, or at an occasional '41, 2 or 3 -- old Sach went on pitching year after year a perennial 49. This miraculous constancy of his age did not bother him very much, nor was he troubled during the games as he sat in the bull pen with the other pitchers awaiting the inevitable moment which was frequent on the St. Louis Browns, when he would know that the time had come for him to take his cool leisurely and casual shamble from the bull pen to the pitcher's mound. Like [inaudible] advice to [inaudible] on the battlefield has recorded in the Hindu's beloved [inaudible], old Sach entered in for the battle as did other men, but with nonattached. Nor did he wear out his nerves, his disposition or his arteries in physical uneasiness, [inaudible] shifting the seat of his trousers from one splinter to another on the bench, when in the bullpen. Instead his manager undoubtedly sensing Satchels divine Buddhist like serenity, provided him with a rocking chair, in which he rolled leisurely back and forth complacently watching the others do the worrying and the work. When some inquisitive reporter with a tact of a modern state department official tried to shake old Sach out of his good-natured equanimity, by asking this ace reliever about his age or why he didn't show a little more hustle, all Sach would reply, "Don't you worry your head, sir. Old Sach is not going to get himself mixed up with that old rascal time." The moral seems clear, the premodern mentality has its advantages as well as its liabilities for medical science. Perhaps there will be no end to our overcrowded hospitals filled with the emotional starved and disturbed, not to mention the schizophrenics and the incurably insane as there may be no cure of diseases of the vascular system until the modern mathematically and mechanically precise and socially exacting mind incorporates into and reconciles within itself, the more intuitive emotional and impressionistically esthetic values and ways of feeling, thinking and behaving of so-called primitive man and the sages of the classically [inaudible]. Certain the diseases peculiar to modern man suggests a very real sense in which so-called primitive man is the true modern and we are the out [inaudible] and misbehaving barbarians. In any event, both medicine and men ignore facts as their parent. Hence it cannot be said too often that a sense of inner peace, a feeling of irritation or the basic philosophical way of thinking about time is just as much a fact to which medicine must adjust itself it is -- if it is to be scientific as is a patient's blood pressure, the hydrogen iron concentration of that blood or the chemistry of the bacteria in a polluted water supply. In fact, the philosophical conception of time accepted unconsciously by both doctor and patient may be the major cause of the high blood pressure. But where the cause of a disease is philosophical, the cure also must be philosophical. Concretely perhaps this may very well mean that in prescribing a specific drug to alleviate the pain from the calcified arteries of a given patient, the physician of tomorrow will also call in that patient's children and prescribe for them a new scientifically verified philosophical way of thinking about time. In short, to become aware of the bearing, of the different cultural mentalities of our world upon medical science, is to realize that the doctor if he is to remain scientific must pursue both anthropology and natural science to their philosophical roots.

[ Applause ]

>> Thank you very much Professor Northrop. I think as most of you know, its part of the culture of these meetings at the academy that there is a brief question period afterwards. And Dr. Northrop has kindly agreed to stay a little while and answer any questions you may have. In order to have some orderly procedure, may we ask that you write your questions on a piece of paper and hand them up here. The ushers will be coming down for them, you need not leave your seats. While we're waiting Professor Northrop, I wondered if you'd like to comment a little on how we got that way. After all, we're the peculiar people here in the west. There are many more people who have this sort of [inaudible] idea.

>> F.S.C. Northrop: Well, as I tried to suggest at one point in the paper between the lines, I believe that this started in -- with the Greek mathematical physicists. This way of thinking about nature, not in terms of immediately sensed and emotionally felt nature and man, but in terms of unobserved scientifically constructed objects and the universal laws that those entities satisfy. And that this generates this mathematically exact way of thinking about time that came to its most perfect expression in Newton's [inaudible]. And that this has gone over into our society. And now this is a side of our nature, but I think in pursuing this side of our nature, we have tended to overlook the scientific fact that there is the intuitive felt and immediate side and the past of both philosophy and science, and medicine of the immediate future is defined scientifically by analysis how to put these two things together consistently.

>> In view of what you said, not just now, but before, is it not clear that no American is properly educated if he fails to understand the cultural mentalities of different people. What do you think could be done in the American educational system to fill this gap?

>> F.S.C. Northrop: [Inaudible] answer that question by referring to what happened to Pearl Harbor. [Inaudible] the large proportion of that community were Japanese and yet as I understand, that Pearl Harbor, our FBI had to arrest only about 200 people in a very -- and only a few of them were Japanese. Now I believe that one of the reasons why they remained loyal to our country was that the university introduced courses in Japanese and Chinese culture and that students -- western American students went to those courses and the result was that it made the native people feel that their culture was being understood. That there wasn't anything there that they were ashamed of and this made them not only loyal [inaudible], got them off the defensive about their own culture and about their parent's way of thinking and their parent's speech. And I think it's along such lines as this. It's by education and our school teachers need to be aware, our health officers, our psychiatrists, need to be aware of the problem that is faced by children coming into our schools and being presented a curriculum based on fundamentally and Anglo American cultural mentality -- when the children come from parentage and from homes with a different cultural mentality that has its virtues and -- and we got to face this problem together. And the main thing is to get it out into the open, see what it is. When you want to see your problem, you got it in major part [inaudible]. The fear goes out in it then and then you can find [inaudible].

>> Do you think that the Puerto Rican and Italian immigration or the recent one differ in its effect on those people than the effects of the earlier Italian and Jewish immigration before World War I?

>> F.S.C. Northrop: Well, I shouldn't think [inaudible] time would make any difference unless the areas from which the people came in -- say suppose they came from southern Italy after World War II, when the -- between and during World War II certain north battalion or modern western ways got into southern Italy. Then they came with this kind of -- semi-westernized southern Italian mentality, semi-modernized [inaudible] situation [inaudible] might be different, but otherwise I [inaudible]. That is -- the remarkable thing is that when you get into a non-law contract societies and I believe that every society in the world that has not been struck by western law or by western science and medicine is a law of status mentality society. Now there are differences in them, but I believe the differences are minor compared to the [inaudible]. The identity is family's [inaudible]. If the individual doesn't function as an individual before and [inaudible]. Nor is the basis of moral authority in consent, nor is the basis of good government in consent. It's only in a law of contract society that you have got a right to maintain no government without the consent of the [inaudible]. In a -- in a law of status society, the source of moral authority is in status, it's in birth. It's in the status quo, the family structural tribal situation. And as Sir Robert [inaudible] pointed out at the beginning of his famous patriarch and answered to the later [inaudible] came after him, but he [inaudible] that he said this theory, the government finds it consent [inaudible] is all wrong. [Inaudible] just look at the society of England today, in his day -- did any younger son ever consent to have the property go to the eldest son? [Inaudible] no. Did the lower commoners families in the English hierarchy ever consent to have the country [inaudible] have their political power and did the country [inaudible] ever consent in a way to have the king [inaudible]. That his moral authority doesn't come through [inaudible]. It comes through custom status, not through individualistic consent.

>> Do you think that the [inaudible] entire family moving in through the [inaudible] is an example to the possibility of combining modern western science with the ancient family [inaudible]?

>> F.S.C. Northrop: Well, that's an example of these two things coming together. That is -- Japan is the most remarkable country in the world and putting together modern western ways and keeping the [inaudible]. They had -- this was one of the most exciting stories I believe that there is. They never had to modify this family [inaudible]. One of the secrets of it is that the Dutch went to Japan very early in the colonial era when western nations went and touched on the southwest tip of Japan and there the Japanese scholars contacted them and they brought scientific [inaudible] from Europe. Thus, the scientific mathematical mentality got into the Japanese people in a very fundamental and exact way before it went into any other [inaudible]. Now I think this is one of the reasons why they were able to take on a modern mathematically run scientifically exact Navy and [inaudible] and have to make themselves into a first rate modern [inaudible] almost 75 years or 100 years [inaudible]. It's a very remarkable achievement. Now the -- the secret of it is that they never had to break out the inner [inaudible]. They handed the industry and the Navy to different families in the [inaudible] and best preserve the family tie loyalty and got the absolute devotion to the nation, which is a hard thing to get in the law of status society because of the local village center limits how one's willingness to transfer [inaudible]. And they got this due to the [inaudible]. There is a [inaudible] in their own law status mentality and absolute devotion [inaudible]. He's the top patriot of the hierarchy of patriarchal families. Now this is what a [inaudible] generate the national [inaudible] stronger than the families [inaudible]. Now what tends to undermine democracy in -- in non-western cultures is that the family [inaudible] triumphs over national integrity with respect to finance at the federal level. That requires loyalty to law of contract constitution. And it never occurs to a law of status mentality that morality has anything to do with something that isn't right in one's belly almost as a feeling of tie to one's family and one's parents. And it seems perfectly obvious [inaudible] in your own family is stronger than anyone else, but therefore the loyalty must be stronger there than anywhere else. The moral [inaudible]. And then this is why it's so hard, this is I believe why [inaudible]. There isn't any -- no sorts of national unity. It's wonderful [inaudible].

>> I'm afraid I'll have to apologize to many of you who submitted questions, which there really isn't time to answer. I know that Professor Northrop has to get back to Yale tonight and [inaudible] himself to the newly reorganized New Haven Railroad. [Laughter] I'll turn the meeting over -- back over to Dr. Keyes.

>> Dr. Harold Brown Keyes: You will notice from your program that the next meeting is January 18. The speaker will be Alexander H. Laten, Professor of Sociology, Cornell University. His subject will be mental health and [inaudible]. You could look that up in the dictionary. Good night.

[ Applause ]