epidemic rising from even one case rages in more than one class-room. And this is true of other diseases which are more dangerous, though not so common as measles (and therefore responsible for fewer deaths).
Then there are the ailments that arise from school life itself. Many of them are concerned with the nervous system. But they are not, as a rule, infectious; so we need not say anything of them here. Let us keep to the epidemics. Only a few words have we written or read, but they serve to show that the trail of disease is over the schools—that many suffer, that nearly all run grave risks.
But though the medical reports are alarming, yet they are not depressing. There is evidence to show that the evil can be fairly tackled, and the danger warded off. It appears that the heredity of the mass of the children is good in a very determined kind of way—that the human race is like clear water tumbling from a polluted spout, which rises clear, though it is stained almost from the first. Moreover, we are not on the down grade, but improving. A hundred years ago the death-rate was higher than it now is, the fit perishing with the unfit in thousands.
Having rescued Hope, then, out of the black waters of these modern medical reports, let us turn
