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23
Many questions concerning public health are brought prominently
to our notice by a great war. The chief defects of our
unorganized ways of looking after and feeding the young people of
the nation, is shown up by the large numbers of young men who
are willing to serve as soldiers but who are found unfit either on
recruitment or after a short period of training. There seems to
have been a much smaller number of rejections than is usual for
the Army, and this is probably due to a class of men who have
come forward at their country's call, who in ordinary times would
not present themselves to the recruiting officer. The total number
of rejections from preventable defects will probably be 25 per
cent. at the least, so that it is easy to see that there is a loss of
considerably more men by unfitness than have as yet been lost to
us by the casualties of the campaign. Much, no doubt, can be
done by prevention and treatment of illness during school life,
but during the first five years of life much damage is done to the
physique of children by the circumstances of their environment.
Improper feeding, too much and too little. Improper clothing,
too much and too little. Want of cleanliness of clothing and
person, both tending to lower physique. The failure of many
parents to rise to the necessities of the proper up-bringing of
children, and the too prevalent belief that a child is a sort of
property tne only kind that many possess, and which they ignorantly
declare they have the right to treat as they choose; it being
their own.
As for tetter housing conditions great improvements are being
made, but in other directions much requires to be done by instructions
to mothers and older children, in the management of infants.
Another period of life has often even more disastrous effects upon
the physique of our youths I???refer to the years between leaving
school and reaching manhood. This applies in a less marked
degree to the girls. In another place I have shown that at 14
years of age there is very little difference between the elementary
school boy in such a town as Kingston, and the Public School