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15
The deeper we dip into the real cause of this mortality the more
abundant becomes the evidence that the cause which exceeds all others
in potency is improper feeding. Wherever the investigations are
carried out in these islands, whether it be at Finsbury, Brighton,
Croydon or Liverpool, it is found that where infants are fed artificially
there the infantile mortality is highest. Moreover, in a series of
observations made of children of the labouring classes of New York,
the large percentage of the poorly-developed was found to be attributable
not to insufficiency of food, but to the wrong kind of food. The
early nutrition of the child is of the greatest importance to the State,
and the education of mothers in all that conduces to the production of
healthy children is the most essential part of any system of education.
The ignorance of household management and of the principles of
Hygiene among the poor is responsible, in no small measure, for their
high preventable mortality, their inferior physique, their intemperance
and their poverty. How possible it is to better the conditions of
modern life, and thus to improve the health, happiness, and physical
powers of the people, and thereby their mental vigour and industrial
efficiency, is generally recognised; and to this end a suitable hygienic
education, moral and material, of the future parents seems essential
Not only have 15,000 medical men and the Commission on Physical
Degeneration recommended that such teaching should be made
compulsory, but the English Board of Education and the Scotch
Education Department have accepted that recommendation. School
Hygiene therefore is not a mere fad of a few individuals, it lies at the
basis of all education and is an important part of the superstructure as
well. Therefore it is important that from the earliest years of school
life children should be taught by example as well as precept the
elements of healthy living. The knowledge that may be procured
subsequently to that age is often gained at the price of a needlessly
costly personal experience. The object then of School Hygiene is to
secure for the physical life its maximum possibility of sound health
and to develop the mental life side by side with this. The need of
bodily health as the foundation of sound mental work is recognised at
the present day, and we must not rest content until in the homes as