Untitled

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXIX, Issue 21, 23 November 1907, Page 28

Some remarkable facts as to the physical condition of the better-class English youtn are tabulated in a paper contriouted to the London “Lancet ’ by Dr. Clement Dukes. Dr. Dukes, who is the physician in Rugby School, gives the results of the physical examination of 1000 boys, between the age of 13 and 15, which was carried out on their admission to a public school. These British boys, he says, may be regarded as a special class: strong and healthy, well-bred, well-fed. and reared mainly in the country. The examination showed that 522 of the boys were above the normal height and 3G5 below it. while 113 were up to the average. Again, 482 were above the normal weight, 471 below, and 57 of the average weight. Further, 445 were above the normal chest measurement, 423 below, ami 132 up to the average. Dr. Dukes goes on to remark that it is somewhat depressing to register in the twentieth century the large number of acquired preventible deformaties (not momentous, if is true, but still indicative of inferior systems of nurture and education), which arc presented by the most favoured class of boys in Britain —deformities occurring between the time of nursery life nnd the completion of education in the preparatory school at the age of 13. For a preponderating proportion of mothers in the higher social rank either cannot or will not nurse their children; nnd more than this, substitute for the naturally appointed breast-milk boiled cows' milk, which, in the process of boiling, is deprived of

some element in its nurtitive value which tends to the advent of rickets or infantile scurvy. On the othar hand, some of „ these deformities may result from the debilitating effect of infantile maladies, while the remainder are incidental to

unnatural school methods and the dish • figuring effect produced by faulty pospermitted or practically compelled during school life, so that the supple bones become moulded imperceptibly, but surely, into abnormal forms.