and abundant water, means--however industrious and cleanly the
instincts of nurse and mother--a lack of the highest possible
cleanliness and a lack of health and vitality. And the absence of
highly-skilled medical advice, or the attentions of over-worked and
under-qualified practitioners, may convert a transitory crisis or a
passing ailment into permanent injury or fatal disorder.

It is very doubtful if these most favourable conditions fall to the lot
of more than a quarter of the children born to-day even in England,
where infant mortality is at its lowest. The rest start handicapped.
They start handicapped, and fail to reach their highest possible
development. They are born of mothers preoccupied by the necessity of
earning a living or by vain occupations, or already battered and
exhausted by immoderate child-bearing; they are born into insanity and
ugly or inconvenient homes, their mothers or nurses are ignorant and
incapable, there is insufficient food or incompetent advice, there is,
if they are town children, nothing for their lungs but vitiated air,
and there is not enough sunlight for them. And accordingly they fall
away at the very outset from what they might be, and for the most part
they never recover their lost start.

Just what this handicap amounts to, so far as it works out in physical
consequences, is to be gauged by certain almost classical figures,
which I have here ventured to present again in graphic form. These
figures do not present our total failure, they merely show how far the
less fortunate section of the community falls short of the more
fortunate. They are taken from Clifford Allbutt's _System of
Medicine_ (art. "Hygiene of Youth," Dr. Clement Dukes). 15,564 boys
and young men were measured and weighed to get these figures. The black
columns indicate the weight (+9 lbs. of clothes) and height