Shorter Notices
Health the Unknown : The Story of the Peckham Experiment. gy John Comerford. (Hamish Hamilton. 7s. 6d.)
THIS is a discursive enthusiastic comment on the Peckham Health Centre and on The Peckham Experiment, a book about the Centre. Mr. Comerford explains how the book was sent to him a few years ago, and how he decided to write " a book about a book," since he could not visit the Peckham Centre itself, which was closed because of the war. However, the Centre reopened in 1946, and he went there and his approval was confirmed. The fact that the Centre cultivates health as a positive good—every member being examined whether he thinks he is ill or not—and is open to families and not single individuals, gives Mr. Comerford an opportunity for disserta- tions on childhood, adolescence, love and marriage. His thesis is that Nature has made wonderful provision for family life, but that " civilisation," especially the twentieth century (as exemplified by quotations from Aldous Huxley and modern poets), has distorted life and suppressed " latent human function." Simple biological facts, discoveries made at the Centre, much praise for its achieve- ments, long quotations from The Peckham Experiment provide a somewhat wandering but stimulating treatise. One wonders, how- ever, if Mr. Comerford, in his preaching of family life as the great necessity, makes quite enough allowance for the diversity of human character.
Previous page
