ABSTRACT
In Hubert Crackanthorpe’s ‘The Turn of the Wheel’, Eardley Lingard, a successful businessman and politician who has just been elevated to the House of Lords, tries to decide which of the ills of the age he should address in his maiden speech. Most would feature in an account of any age. One, however, stands out: ‘doctors, hurrying on the degeneration of the race’ (1897, pp. 167-8). Degeneration-a falling-off from original purity, a reversion to less complex forms of structure-troubled many people during the second half of the nineteenth century. Unlike Lingard’s other anxieties, it provides a key to the thinking of one age in particular. Also characteristic is his belief that the doctors have caused the disease they are meant to cure.
