Youth and Health
As a regimental medical officer in the last war, general practitioner, physician to a children's hospital, and a medical inspector of schools, Dr. Batten writes with.' an exceptional knowledge of young people and their parents and, it may be added, with an eminently readable pen and a wise and refreshing freedom from fads of all kinds. Taus he thinks it possible that an innocent visitor from another planet, after studying our advertisements, public announcements, lectures, institutes, and periodicals, might conclude that health was something " to be precariously maintained by the use of an elaborate, recently invented apparatus or as a solemn mystery administered by a priest- hood " and not " a thing to be earned and kept by means well known to enlightened men and women for many centuries or as a natural state to be used and enjoyed freely, fully and without talk or fuss."
Basically, as he points out, the health of the young is conditioned by three main factors : heredity, surroundings, and mode of life. About heredity, in the present state of our knowledge, doctors can do very little. Fortunately the group of actual hereditary diseases is relatively small and rare. But the physical and temperamental pattern of a boy or girl is always, of course, to some extent, dictated by inheritance and not to be altered by magic or medicine. No amount of food or country air will convert the small, wiry greyhound type into the heavyweight pugilist.
As regards surroundings, important as this factor may be, you will find, as Dr. Batten says, healthy and weedy children in similar houses on the same side of the same village street, and pale and rosy-checked children sitting side by side in elementary schools in the east end as well as the west. But he has many wise things to say about environment, including a condemnation of flats, whether of the luxury or model-dwelling kind, as a deliberate invitation for small families and a brake upon the natural freedom even of these. It is clear, however, that he regards the mode of life as the principal ingredient in health or its reverse.
" The oldest of all reasons " (he reminds us) " for being strong and agile are to get food by hunting, and to save one's life by fighting, running away or climbing a tree, and only less old are to be able to use the spade and plough, to fashion wood, stone, clay and metals, to ride, to row or to sail, to dance and take pleasure in using one's limbs, and to bear arms for one's city-or country."
But now, alas.
" A large and increasing number of our people pass their whole lives without either the chance or the need to use any tool requiring more strength to wield it than the dinner-knife or more skill to use it than the typewriter or the sewing-machine."
How all this can be counteracted—and at how relatively little cost—he suggests in a few brief and persuasive pages. Posture he regards as of more than merely physical importance. " In the atti- tude of despair it is almost impossible not to despair." On the question of diet and nutrition—about which there is an immense amount of half-informed or ill-informed literature—he writes with sanity and common sense ; and he shares Sir Robert Hutchison's opinion that many children, and especially only children, of earnest parents would greatly benefit by a dose or two of neglect. But he touches with great insight on the problems presented by the abnor- mally imaginative, sensitive, and timid boy or girl ; and he deals succinctly and practically with most of the common complaints and misadventures of childhood and adolescence. Altogether, this is emphatically a book that ought to be bought, or at any rate borrowed, by every parent and teacher and all who are interested in the young
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