CHILDREN GROWING FASTER

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 154, 26 March 1938, Page 8 (Supplement)

CHILDREN GROWING FASTER

What Scientific Research Reveals

Children generally are getting their growth faster than before the war, men now stop growing at 20, when they used to stop at 25, and the human race seems to be growing taller, according to a long report on “Physique and Health,” by Dr. C. Wroezynski, published iu the'Bulletin of the Health Organisation of the League of Nations. Geneva. Dr. Wroczynski, who is chief medical adviser to the Ministry of National Education, made a special inquiry in Britain, France. Germany. Austria, Czechoslovakia, Denmark and Poland, and also includes to some extent the United states and other countries in his survey. He started with the questions: “How will the living organism react biologically to the effort demanded of it by the circumstances of present-day life'; Will it conquer these difficulties, or will it come to the end of the reserve energy stored up by earlier generations. and thus break down and degenerate?” After uncovering a mass of contradictory but highly interesting evidence he answers inconclusively but by no means hopelessly. “Man is undergoing profound ami rapid biological changes,” he says. “Medical examinations of different age groups (school children, recruits, adults) reveal many physical

defects calculated to reduce efficiency. These physical defects were even found to be more frequent in the generations which suffered the privations of the war or economic crisis during childhood.”

After applauding the tendency of hygiene now to study man as a whole and build up the body, he says: “Up to the present, modern methods and systems of physical education—and nowadays this includes diet. rest, work and physical exercise—hare not produced on the health of the masses anv effect demonstrable by statistic."l methods. To tell the truth, gymnastics and sport are not practised on scientific lines. In the opinion of the experts, we have nor the necessary knowledge yet.” He ends by urging more rec? i *”< , h iw to the problems of physique and health as a matter of world concern.

Regarding growth Dr. Wroezyuski finds:

“An undeniable fact established in several countries is tlie increase iu the height of conscripts during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries Roessle also observes that. judgin'.: by the dimensions of tlie war equip ment in the Middle Ages, men were shorter then.

“During the last hundred years or so height has increased considerably.”