Page:Labour and childhood.djvu/26

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LABOUR AND CHILDHOOD

per cent have heart disease, while 25 per cent of all the children are anæmic. Among the wage-earning children matters are much worse. From 20 to 30 per cent are backward or dull from causes that are altogether physical in the ordinary sense.

Diseases vary in different countries—just as human types, and even animals and plants, vary. The East has its own plagues. And there are no two Western countries that have exactly the same ways of getting ill and unfit. The alien brings with him his own disease—as, for example, the disease known as favus which exists in London, but not among English-born children, save in the case of a few who have caught the infection from foreign children. On the other hand, England has her own scourges—phthisis, for example, which still carries off young and old in great numbers. Then among school-going children there is the very common ailment called adenoids. In Scotland and in England the number of these is legion. In some quarters of Scottish cities 25 per cent of the children suffer from the distress of blocked-up nostril and throat. The Report of the Committee on Physical Deterioration had the evidence on this point of Mr. Arthur Cheadle among others. Mr. Cheadle examined the state of the ears, throat, and nose of 1000 school children between the ages of